iving with a friend, a traveller, or guest, just as the Arab shares his
tent and the Indian his bowl of succotash. They cannot have company,
they say. Why? Because it is such a fuss to get out the best things, and
then to put them back again. But why get out the best things? Why not
give your friend, what he would like a thousand times better, a bit of
your average home-life, a seat at any time at your board, a seat at your
fire? If he sees that there is a handle off your tea-cup, and that there
is a crack across one of your plates, he only thinks, with a sigh of
relief, "Well, mine a'n't the only things that meet with accidents," and
he feels nearer to you ever after; he will let you come to his table and
see the cracks in his tea-cups, and you will condole with each other on
the transient nature of earthly possessions. If it become apparent in
these entirely undressed rehearsals that your children are sometimes
disorderly, and that your cook sometimes overdoes the meat, and that
your second girl sometimes is awkward in waiting, or has forgotten a
table-propriety, your friend only feels, "Ah, well, other people have
trials as well as I," and he thinks, if you come to see him, he shall
feel easy with you.

"_Having company_" is an expense that may always be felt; but easy daily
hospitality, the plate always on your table for a friend, is an expense
that appears on no account-book, and a pleasure that is daily and
constant.

Under this head of hospitality, let us suppose a case. A traveller comes
from England; he comes in good faith and good feeling to see how
Americans live. He merely wants to penetrate into the interior of
domestic life, to see what there is genuinely and peculiarly American
about it. Now here is Smilax, who is living, in a small, neat way, on
his salary from the daily press. He remembers hospitalities received
from our traveller in England, and wants to return them. He remembers,
too, with dismay, a well-kept establishment, the well-served table, the
punctilious, orderly servants. Smilax keeps two, a cook and chambermaid,
who divide the functions of his establishment between them. What shall
he do? Let him say, in a fair, manly way, "My dear fellow, I'm delighted
to see you. I live in a small way, but I'll do my best for you, and Mrs.
Smilax will be delighted. Come and dine with us, so and so, and we'll
bring in one or two friends." So the man comes, and Mrs. Smilax serves
up such a dinner as lies wi