Excerpt from A House Party: An Account of Stories Told at a Gathering of Famous American Authors LL the guests were cross or yawning or both, and the hostess was almost at the point of suicide. Yet any one looking in upon them that evening, as they lounged about the fine old library after dinner, would have seen little excuse for either mood. Mrs. Goddard was an experienced chate laine, and had issued her invitations for that house party wittingly. Eligible youths had been invited for the benefit of desirable girls; middle-aged bache lors had been bidden to brighten the hours of doubt ful-aged maidens; and grey-haired men in their anecdotage had been included to add spice to the gossip of the dowagers. There were multi brain people for conversation and uni-brain people for golf. There were sedentary people for cards and restless people for picnics. There were strenu ous people for croquet and peace - loving people for umpires. It was, in fact, a wonderfully assorted and combined house party. Nor did the perfection Of it reside only in the variety yet harmony of its guests. The house was fine enough and comfortable enough to satisfy the most fastidious, and was neither so small as'to be cramped nor so large as to be barn-like. Then, too. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.