Saturday to Monday

A Report of the Week-End Season Now Happily Passing Into History

GEORGE S. CHAPPELL

GLANCING back over the now waning season, I am struck, as I am annually, by the paucity of week-ends; also by the slipshod way in which they are usually handled. It is in the hope of bettering these conditions that I write this article—now, while my summer sufferings arc still fresh in my mind, for I have no reason to suppose that week-ends will not continue to occur at regular intervals.

Consider the question of their number. The average stay in the country where week-ends are possible is three months, say from the fifteenth of June to a like date in September. After that date some thirty million mothers tell each other simultaneously, "We would stay much later if it were not for the children's school."

In those three months there are twelve weekends with perhaps one spare in case of a puncture or blowout. But let us say twelve because thirteen is unlucky and I am superstitious and glad of it. Now, out of your twelve weekends you and your wife are practically certain to be dated up elsewhere for at least four. Struggle as you may, you can't have people visit you without having to visit them. No, sir, when they arc with you they inevitably bring up the question of a return game on the home grounds. "Come on, now, no foolin'," says your guest, "will you come to us for the twelfth, or is the nineteenth better?" You and your wife glare helplessly at each other. You finally agree on the twelfth which is soonest over and then, drat it! you find that Will has been reading out of the 1927 calendar, the old skeezix, and the painful choice has to be made all over again.

In passing, have you ever noticed that as soon as you are lashed to the mast for a particular date two or three other alluring possibilities heave over the horizon? You have to say "No" to an invitation to run down the Sound in the Hookers' yacht because, O Death! you have promised to spend the night in a remodelled barn in the Jersey hinterland.

SO I assume you will concede that you are lucky if you crawl out with less than four of these inflictions. That leaves you eight weekends for home consumption. How pitifully inadequate this number is, considering the number of people whom you either must or wish to entertain. You have to do it in the summer because your cottage is really quite attractive—with ivy covering the place where the shingles came off (memo: fix shingles next Sat.) and you wouldn't have them see your two by four walk-up on Eleventh Street for anything.

One of the first things we do in our house is to ask a lot of people to visit who we know cannot possibly accept. They are going to Europe or Canada or Wyoming. But we get a slice of kudos out of it and they are, in a way, indebted to us. We asked them, you know. Then we settle down to the serious business of fixing up our dates. As everyone does, we have guests with strikingly dissimilar characteristics. There is a science in arranging the sequence of their visits just as there is in the arrangement of a vaudeville bill.

For instance, the Willings are athletic and the Zabriskies are literary and highbrow. I wouldn't think of having either pair follow the other. The strain of an intellectual holiday after the fury of three days with the Willings would put me in a sanitarium. So we space them, sticking the Burkharts, who are delightfully topheavy morons, in between.

The Willings led our batting list this year. I reasoned that we would be in better condition to take them on when we were fresh from the city than later in the vacation period when everyone is all fagged out. Mabel and I went into training a few days before their arrival, swinging our golf clubs and tennis rackets and swimming although the water was icy, for I hold that it is the duty of host and hostess to prepare themselves for the entertainment of their guests, making up a menu in advance, be it athletic, intellectual or merely social.

The Willings were more strenuous than ever this year. Ned tried to get me to take the morning train out of the city so that we could have eighteen holes before supper but I spiked that proposal with a stern refusal. I had enough punishment ahead of me without begging for more.

WE had two cloudless days which I should have regretted more but for diplomacy on my part. The sunshine gave Ned a chance to follow out his program without a hitch. It consisted, to mention only the main events, of getting to the club at eight on Saturday morning so as to get started ahead of the crowd, a swim at eleven with a brisk run up the beach, tennis immediately after lunch followed by a snappy nine holes and dancing at Cedar Grove Casino in the evening. We were then through for the day except that Ned suggested that he and I walk home (2 miles) letting the girls drive. Sunday was the same, except that there was no dancing, we being on the way back to town.

A year ago I tried to keep up with a schedule like this, with the result that I couldn't go to the office until Thursday, and I was peeling so that my stenographer fled in horror. So this year I resorted to diplomacy by arranging most of the events with friends. Mabel and I played some mixed doubles and I took him on for a round of golf. The rest of the time I farmed him out. It was all one to Ned. He doesn't care whom he is with as long as he is sweating. Mabel worked the same thing with Frances so that a pleasant time was had by all.

We have formed the habit of staging Relatives' Week right after the Athletic Carnival, because it is sedentary and restful (in a sense), and also because it is one of the set pieces that we are glad to have over. Both Mabel and I are fond of our in-laws, but we like them better in retrospect than in anticipation. There is a good deal of awkward kissing on these occasions, about which the children are becoming dangerously turbulent. My wife called my attention to the fact that I ought to speak to my youngest daughter about the rude way she escaped between her Aunt Jane's legs, but I pointed out that quite probably this rudeness prevented Aunt Jane from prolonging her stay indefinitely, so the offence was condoned.

As a foil to this solemn festival, we had the Whipples out for our third week-end. Lois and Tom Whipple belong to the younger drinking set. There was nothing formal or dull about their hours with us. My preparation for this consisted of merely a consultation with our local bootlegger, who brings the stuff right into his own dock in his lobster boat, the authorities notwithstanding.

MABEL had orange juice ready, fresh mint in a glass of the only water I saw for forty-eight hours, cracked ice in the bowl, and glasses, shaker, corkscrew and bottle opener handy. Marvellous Mabel! A perfect woman, nobly planned. We had cocktail parties at noon, Scottish rites at intervening hours and a wham of a supper party Saturday night that ended with mixed bathing at midnight and mixed singing by a double quartette at dawn.

It was just as well, I think, that we spent the following week-end away. It seems the neighbors were beginning to talk.

Our next guests were the Lloyds, who are at present suffering from curly maple in its most acute form. For this week-end also our own community saw little of us, for we were on the road from dawn until dusk, covering four hundred miles and half that number of antique shops. Mary Lloyd priced nine thousand highboys, tables and chairs, bought a footstool and returned to town with her purse bulging with the cards of disappointed dealers whom she had asked to save things for her. I hope she made good on her promise to write to them. If she didn't, there are a lot of aching hearts in old Connecticut.

BY this time the alcoholic aura left by the Whipples had dissolved and we decided to play our trump card, a visit by the Burkharts, who for some unknown reason enjoy stopping at our modest cottage once a year. They come over from Long Island in their sleek motor boat, and the big moment of our summer is when we walk down the dock to meet them. Maybe we're not the top of the heap then!

But this annual splash is not without its frightful responsibilities, particularly for Mabel. Two of the children have to be evicted so as to supply the proper housing and aquarium facilities. Fresh cakes of soap and our most regal towels are installed with strict commands to our regular inmates not to touch them under pain of death.

Our simple meal schedule goes completely away. The Burkharts breakfast in their room, not appearing in public before eleven. Luncheon is at two and a state banquet is served at eight. Outside help has to be hired in the person of Mrs. Peabody, the iceman's wife, who winks at me as one who might say, "You old fake!, pretending you live like this when you know that you owe my husband forty dollars." But she really has a heart of gold. Two years ago the cook walked out on us just after the Burkharts arrived, but Mrs. Peabody turned to and cooked the finest dinner I ever ate. My daughter disguised herself as a maid and made such a hit that Mrs. Burkhart tried to hire her away from us.

(Continued on page 118)

(Continued from page 87)

This year their visit was a grand success. Mr. Burkhart brought over some champagne, which apparently still grows on Long Island, and we made merry in a most decorous way. Mrs. Burkhart talks a lot, and he says little and thinks less but they are charming, restful people.

All in all, I think I prefer their visit to that of the Zabriskies, who arc so highbrow that it hurts. Paul is pale and literary and has clammy hands, but Sigrid is the worst. She took the name Sigrid because she says it makes her over into something different and my son said, "You're different, all right."

We sit through fearful hours listening to Sigrid's theories, one of which is that when children do anything bad the parents should be punished. She is so earnest about it that you would know right away that she hadn't any children. We asked them once, out of pity and they have since assumed that the date is a fixture.

Thank goodness, the season is over, and we shall have no more of them this year.