FOR most of us the active business of the day is over at sundown. Mothers of large families, physicians and occasionally other workers are employed over time; but most of us can count on leisure after six o’clock. Much of our happiness depends upon how this leisure is employed. That it should afford recreation of one sort or another is a commonly accepted opinion, though one that is accepted usually without appreciation of the obligations involved. Recreation implies something more than idleness. One can not be amused in any worth-while sense without sitting up and paying attention. Foreigners complain habitually that Americans take their pleasure sadly, that they do not go in for gaiety with spirit. We are much more vital in our attitude toward work than toward play. We know that we must pay for success in labor of any sort, but the debt we owe to amusement is a point not yet so widely grasped. Pleasure is shy of the person who makes only occasional advances to her. She must be courted habitually in order to give a full return. We are all acquainted with the dull unhappy appearance of the sedulous man of business off for a rare holiday. He is out of his element. He knows how to behave himself at work but he is not acquainted with the fundamental principles of having a good time. These can not be learned in a minute. One must have practise in enjoyment in order to carry off the matter easily; and this practise should be a habit of every-day life. Many people who stand shyly off from the delights of the world and wonder why they are deprived of them, fail to realize that diversion of any sort worthy the name, is a thing for which one must make some effort.

It is at home that one should cultivate the graces that make one attractive abroad; and this is only preliminary to saying that planning for the every-day recreation of a household should be as much a matter of course as devising ways and means for the purchase of food and clothing.

The first requisite for bringing about an atmosphere of festivity and good cheer at home is to adopt in some degree the methods that one uses away from home. If one is invited out to dinner, one makes some preparation for it, and so one should do for dinner at home. Externals have much to do with coaxing gaiety to live as a guest in the house. A pretty table and food managed with some regard to esthetic values as well as to the palatable quality, have a happy effect upon the mind and temper of the diners. A few flowers properly distributed assist still further. If all the inmates of a house are in the habit, as they should be, of making some change in their toilet for dinner, this of itself makes a sharp line of demarcation between the work-time and the play-time of the twenty-four hours. The hint of festivity in attire induces a happy and a festive frame of mind, imparts just that touch of difference from the habit of prosaic daylight necessary to send the mind sailing off into pleasant channels.

The care for the dinner-table, for the personal appearance and, generally speaking, for pretty environment implies effort. Lazy people can not hope for these delightful effects of a material kind. Neither can they expect the happiness which comes to those who take some pains at home for the mental entertainment of themselves and their household. There are many people who regard it as deceitful and insincere to forecast what one shall talk about and it is quite true that formally planned talk is a foe to spontaneity and naturalness. But usually the man or woman who entertains by his conversation is the person who, in a general way, has taken some thought about what he shall say. Given the opportunity, conversation, charming in its spontaneity, rises out of the mental habit of noting down for future reference pleasant or odd personal experiences, good stories, the quirks in one’s own mind. One must not intrude these in a place where they do not fit, but it is not in the least a social sin to guide the talk toward your own thought provided you do not thereby push out something better. We are all given tongues and with them a certain conversational responsibility. If each member of the family made it his business and his pleasure during the day to remember the best part of his experience that he might relate it at the dinner-hour some part of that gloom which descends upon so many American families at the evening meal would be dissipated.

If one cultivates the prettier touches of personal appearance for that part of the day after six o’clock, whether at home or abroad, one should also cultivate the pleasanter and more agreeable states of mind. Business should be put behind one. The petty cares of the day should go unmentioned. The ills of body and mind should be, as far as possible, forgot. Those little courtesies and formalities of manner that we admire in the practised man or woman of society are as decorative at home as away and equally creative of a festive atmosphere. In one of the magazines of the last decade there is a homely effective story of a young girl, just home from a house-party and full of its gaiety, to whom the idea occurred that the methods employed by her hostess might make a delightful week in her own large family circle. She took the matter in hand, and invited her mother to be the guest of honor for the seven days. Some entertainment was planned for each evening in the week, sometimes with visitors and sometimes not. The women of the family wore their best frocks frequently during the week. The prettiest china and the best silver were used as freely as if for company. The result of it all was that the family voted visiting at home a signal success.

There are many specific ways of providing amusement for evenings at home. One has space only for the mention of a few of these in a short article on the subject. Games of various kinds are an excellent resource for making the after-dinner time pass pleasantly. They cultivate quickness of decision, sociability, a friendly rivalry. Success in games is partly a matter of chance but much more of attention and skill. Many people sniff at them who are too lazy to make the conquest of their methods.

Charades, of which English people never grow tired, as a means of diversion, have their ups and downs in the more quickly changing fashions of America. They provide one of the easiest and merriest means of entertainment. They may be of any degree of simplicity or elaboration, and they call forth as much or as little ingenuity as is possessed by the actors in any given case. They are usually popular because almost everybody has latent a little talent for the actor’s art at which he is willing to try his luck. Many people who are afraid to join in formal theatricals find an outlet for this taste in charades; and so informal usually is this kind of entertainment that the spectators enjoy the acting whether well done or otherwise. It is enough to see one’s friends and acquaintances struggling with a part. If well done, one enjoys the success; if not, one applauds the absurdity of the conception.

Reading aloud to a congenial home party has much to be said in its favor, in spite of its present reputation as a stupid means of passing an evening. “The world may be divided into two classes,” runs an old and favorably known joke, “those who like reading aloud and those who do not. Those who like it are those who do the reading; those who dislike it are those who do the listening.” The half-truth in this witticism must not be accepted for more than it is worth. As an occasional means of passing an evening, reading aloud is diverting and stimulating. The habit of spending one’s evenings in that way is not an encouragement to variety and liveliness of mind. One gets into the way of depending upon the author in hand for entertainment instead of depending upon the action of one’s own mind. Small doses of reading aloud are good. Continual doses are fatal to a proper social ideal.

The people who make their own houses a center of attraction are, generally speaking, happy people. The house where the evening is accepted as a time of diversion is the popular house. The atmosphere there begets gaiety and naturalness of manner. We have all had the experience of making evening calls where we were compelled to stand in the hall till the gas was lighted in the drawing-room or the electricity turned on, where we must pass a dreary fifteen minutes before the members of the family are ready to receive. This kind of preliminary puts a damper upon the spirits of host and guests from which they do not easily recover. To be ready for pleasant evenings, to meet them half-way by one’s attitude is a good recipe for insuring their arrival.

A pleasant and informal method of insuring good times in one’s own house is to make a feature of the Sunday night supper. This is not so formal or expensive a mode of entertainment as dinner-giving. It is a jolly and pleasant method. One may have everything in the way of edibles prepared for the meal in the morning except perhaps one article to be made on the chafing-dish. One may serve this meal with or without servants. Often the guests enjoy the freedom implied in helping the hostess carry off successfully the details of serving. The Sunday evening supper is one of those festivities that imply some elasticity in numbers. This is the sort of meal to which the unexpected guest is welcome, at which the person who “happens in” may feel entirely at ease. Where there are young people in the house, the Sunday night supper is an especially popular institution. They appreciate the delights of entertaining without the care or the formality of more elaborate functions.

The ways of enjoying life away from home after six o’clock in the evening, readily suggest themselves. There are the various functions to which one is invited. There is the theater, the most delightful of resources, but unfortunately one which by reason of its expense is available frequently only by the rich. Receptions, dinners, card-parties and the theater all go to make this earth a more agreeable place to those who have the social instinct. But it must never be forgot that the fundamental place for the cultivation of this instinct is at home, which is the practise ground for formal and general society.