You will invite your own best friends and a couple of her contemporaries of whom you are fond. (It is to be hoped that you have some older friends in the community. We all have fuller lives if our friends include people of all ages.) After luncheon, you will plan a bridge game, if that's what the guest of honor likes, or just sit and chat for a bit, if you know she'd prefer that.

proceed with caution
Do you entertain neighbors? You do if you like them. You do if they've invited you to their houses and you've accepted, whether you enjoyed them or not. You do not entertain your neighbors just because they live next door to you. There is nothing happier than getting on with people, nothing more unhappy than finding yourself involved with people you dislike. For that reason, I advise very strongly that people new to a town or a street or an apartment house use more cau­tion than ordinarily necessary in forming close friendships with people who live nearest them. To be sure, on moving into a new community, you may be lonely and your loneliness will make you eager to have someone to talk to, someone to play bridge with, someone besides your husband and children to have as friends. Remember, though, that neighborhood friendships aren't made in heaven. By the time you've found your level in a community (and eventually everyone does) your next-door neighbors may turn out to be the kind of people you like least.

If you've taken up with them enthusiastically, and you're the thoughtful people you should be, extrication will be painful and hurt feelings probably the least of your troubles.

Social obligations are very real debts. When you accept other people's invitations, you incur such obligations. I am not advocating that you be a cold fish, but I am suggesting that you do not rush headlong into social situations you may regret. Yet it's better to rush impulsively than to be a friendless snob. Some of your impulses are likely to be right, but you will have to pay the price of your lack of restraint. There is, how­ever, a happy medium of social conduct which brings the most satisfac­tion with the least pain.

house guests
Whom you invite as house guests will depend on the space and con­venience of your home. If you have so small an apartment that an extra person must use the living room to sleep in, you will ask only someone you know very well. Your guests must be people who won't be em­barrassed by such necessarily intimate arrangements as having the hostess charge through in her housecoat to start breakfast in the kitchenette. They must also be prepared to stay in bed until the hosts have finished using the bathroom.