It is a grievous error to tell friends you are coming; it puts
them to no end of inconvenience; for days they expect you and you
do not come; their feeling of relief that you did not come is
destroyed by your appearance.

The day we were expected at a friend's summer home at the sea-side
we spent with the Shakers in the valley of Lebanon, waiting for a
new steering-head. Telegrams of inquiry, concern, and consolation
reached us in our retreat, but those who expected us were none the
less inconvenienced.

Then, too, what business have the dusty, grimy, veiled, goggled,
and leathered party from the machine among the muslin gowns, smart
wraps, and immaculate coverings of the conventional house party;
if we but approach, they scatter in self-protection.

From these reflections it is only too plain that the automobile
--like that other inartistic instrument of torture, the grand piano
--is not adapted to the drawing-room. It is not quite at home in
the stable; it demands a house of its own. If the friend who
invites you to visit him has a machine, then accept, for he is a
brother crank; but if he has none, do not fill his generous soul
with dismay by running up his drive-way, sprinkling its spotless
white with oil, leaving an ineradicable stain under the
porte-cochere, and frightening his favorite horses into fits as
you run into the stable.

But it is delightful to go through cities and out-of-the-way
places, just leaving cards in a most casual manner upon people one