You meet several of these people in the country, but they never get
very friendly. You shock them too much with your "London manners."
They vote you "fast," and turn aside, fearful of contamination for
their daughters.

Oh, the dreariness, the heaviness of a country dinner party! It seems
to last four times as long as any other--parish, horses, or crops the
only topic of conversation. How can you be interested in old Jane
Smith's rheumatism when you have never heard of her before; in the
swelling of a favorite mare's hock, when you did not know it possessed
such a thing. People's views grow so dreadfully narrow, shut up in
their small parish. Their stock of conversation is so very small. It
is wise to find out your dinner partner at once, and avoid that man as
you would a disease until the meal is announced. If not, if you
accidentally get in his neighborhood, and he talks to you, all his
conversation is at once exhausted, and you are obliged to hear it over
again at table, or submit to an interesting silence.

Dinner parties anywhere are, I think, a mistake. It is a wicked waste
of time to spend nearly three hours over eating and drinking. And you
require such a very interesting "taker-in" to make it bearable at all.

The river is the nicest way of spending a holiday, in my opinion; you
are so free and untrammeled. Mrs. Grundy even waives some of her laws
on the river. The smaller the cottage, the more primitive the place,
the more enjoyable it is. You can spend your time on the water, and
when you are tired of that, you can hire a pony and trap and drive
through some of the loveliest bits of English scenery, to your heart's
content.