wine red as blood. So Gaius said to them, "Drink freely; this is the
juice of the true vine that makes glad the heart of God and man." And
they did drink and were very merry. The next was a dish of milk well
crumbed. At the sight of which Gaius said, "Let the boys have that, that
they may grow thereby." And so on, dish after dish, till the nuts came
with the recitations and the riddles and the saws and the stories over
the nuts. Thus the happy party sat talking till the break of day.

1. Now, it is natural to remark that the first thing about a host is his
hospitality. And that, too, whether our host is but the head of a hostel
like Goodman Gaius, or the head of a well-appointed private house like
Gaius's neighbour, Mr. Mnason. The first and the last thing about a host
is his hospitality. "Say little and do much" is the example and the
injunction to all our housekeepers that Rabban Shammai draws out of the
eighteenth of Genesis. "Be like your father Abraham," he says, "on the
plains of Mamre, who only promised bread and water, but straightway set
Sarah to knead three measures of her finest meal, while he ran to the
herd and fetched a calf tender and good, and stood by the three men while
they did eat butter and milk under the tree. Make thy Thorah an
ordinance: say little and do much: and receive every man with a pleasant
expression of countenance." Now, this was exactly what Gaius our goodman
did that night, with one exception, which we shall be constrained to
attend to afterwards. "It is late," he said, "so we cannot conveniently
go out to seek food; but such as we have you shall be welcome to, if that
will content." At the same time Taste-that-which-is-good soon had a
supper sent up to the table fit for a prince: a supper of six courses at
that time in the morning, so that the sun was already in the sky when Old
Honest closed his casement.

"Dining in company is a divine institution," says Mr. Edward White, in
his delightful _Minor Moralities of Life_. "Let Soyer's art be honoured
among all men," he goes on. "Cookery distinguishes mankind from the
beasts that perish. Happy is the woman whose daily table is the result
of forethought. Her husband shall rise up and call her blessed. It is
piteous when the culinary art is neglected in our young women's
education. Let them, as St. Peter says, imitate Sarah. Let them see how
that venerable princess went quickly to her kneading-trough and oven and
pre