ng. Sometimes, indeed, he takes a pleasure in it, but that is
only when he has momentarily forgotten that he is making a call. These
are his rewarding moments; and then, the first thing he knows, somebody
is 'making signs' that it is time to go home!

The wise man, noticing these 'signs,' comes home. He stands not upon the
order of his coming, but comes at once.

A call, says Herbert Spencer, in his _Principles of Sociology_, is
'evidently a remote sequence of that system under which a subordinate
ruler had from time to time to show loyalty to a chief ruler by
presenting himself to do homage.' The idea is plausible: was it not for
this very reason that Cleopatra galleyed down the Cydnus to call on
Antony,--a call that would probably have had a different effect on
history if the lady had brought a husband,--and Sheba cameled across the
desert to call on Solomon? The creditor character of the visitation
survives in the common expression 'paying a call.' In both these cases,
however, the calls took on a lighter and brighter aspect, a more
reciprocally admiring and well-affected intimacy, than was strictly
necessary to an act of political homage. One is, after all, human; and
the absence of marital partners, whose presence is always a little
subduing, must be taken into consideration. 'But Solomon,' you say,
'Solomon?' Sir and madam, I rise to your question. In such a situation a
man with seven hundred wives is as good as a bachelor; and I think the
fact that Solomon had seven hundred wives proves it.

Later the Feudal System provided natural scope for innumerable calls of
this nature; visits, as we should now term them, because it was
customary for the callers to bring their nighties--or would have been
if the callers had had any. The Dark Ages, curiously enough, lacked this
garment of the dark. But it was only after the Feudal Period that the
call, as we now know and practise it, became a social custom; and even
to this day feudalism, in an attenuated form, rules society, and the
call is often enough an act of homage to the superior social chief. One
might argue (except for the fact that Sheba _gave_ as well as exhibited
her treasurer to Solomon) that Mrs. Jones is but following historic
precedent when she brings and exhibits Mr. Jones to Mrs. Smith. Or,
again, it might be pointed out that both Cleopatra and Sheba _brought
their slaves_. There is, apparently, more than one sequence (as Mr.
Spencer would say), but there