Table for One: A Hostess Sat Alone

As one of the guests said, “it was too deliciously funny to resent, and the smile which I could not repress I saw reflected from most of the other faces of the company about me.”

At a pretty dinner given recently, the guests, numbering forty, were seated, eight each, at five round tables. Each table was decorated with one variety of flower, and on arriving each guest was presented with a small bouquet of the flowers corresponding to those on the table at which he was to find his place. The table where the host and hostess were seated was placed at such an angle as to command a view of the company by one or the other of them.

This keeping in touch with the guests is a difficulty encountered by all givers of large dinners. In this regard, a New-York woman not long ago quite overreached herself. So puzzled was she at which table to sit herself, that she finally cut the Gordian knot by dining alone at a small table placed in the centre of her guests. As one of the guests said, “it was too deliciously funny to resent, and the smile which I could not repress I saw reflected from most of the other faces of the company about me.”– The New York Times, 1892

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