ks; but rather
of Hebe, cup-bearer to Jupiter, who was the daughter of Juno and wild
lettuce, and who had the power of restoring gods and men to the vigor of
youth. She was probably the only thoroughly sound-conditioned, healthy,
and robust young lady that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came
it was spring.

Visitors

I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to
fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man
that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit
out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me
thither.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship,
three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected
numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally
economized the room by standing up. It is surprising how many great men
and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty
souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted
without being aware that we had come very near to one another. Many
of our houses, both public and private, with their almost innumerable
apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the storage of wines
and other munitions of peace, appear to be extravagantly large for their
inhabitants. They are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be
only vermin which infest them. I am surprised when the herald blows his
summons before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, to see come
creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous mouse,
which soon again slinks into some hole in the pavement.

One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the
difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we
began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room for your
thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they
make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its
lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course
before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again
through the side of his head. Also, our sentences wanted room to unfold
and form their columns in the interval. Individuals, like nations, must
have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral
ground, between them. I have found it a singular luxury to talk across
the pond to a compani