t is well warmed and lighted and furnished with easy-chairs and
sofas, even if everybody is high minded and ready to take part in
refined pleasures, and even if room is made in the family circle for a
host of agreeable friends.

XI.

HOSPITALITY.

No home is genuine which is not also hospitable. Just as we must go out
to get fresh life, we must welcome fresh life which comes in to us. And
further than that it would be a poor nature which found no one to love
outside the home circle. If we love any one we wish to share our life
with our friend.

But it is impossible to be hospitable except by welcoming our visitors
to our every-day life. If we depart much from our usual customs, our
freedom is checked, and the visit becomes a burden, willingly borne,
perhaps, for the time, but sure to be felt if often laid upon us.

A friend, well known in literary circles, inviting me to visit her in a
Western city through which I was to pass on my way to another State
wrote, "You must stay more than a day or two, for, if not, I shall have
to give up my time to you, and I can't interrupt my daily work! I go
into my library at nine o'clock every morning and stay till two. But in
the afternoon I drive, and when in the evening my husband comes home
from business and my children from school I give myself up to my
family."

Upon this invitation I determined to stay a week. "You must not come
into my library in the morning unless I invite you," said my friend
laughing; "but there is another library adjoining your room where I
shall not venture to disturb you without leave!"

I remember a home which opened very hospitable doors to me when I was a
young girl,--that of a widow with two young daughters. They were in
straitened circumstances, and could not effectively heat the large and
handsome house left by the father of the family. "I ask you to come in
the winter, my dear," the lady used to say to me, "because you live in
the country and can sleep comfortably in a cold room: I ask my city
friends to come in the summer." That, I think, showed a true spirit of
hospitality. She gave what she had to those who could enjoy it. I shall
never forget the cosy afternoons I have passed in her warm sitting-room,
while one read aloud and the rest did fancy work, or sometimes the
plainest of sewing. We read novels, some first rate, some second, or
even third rate, without a thought of getting any benefit from them. But
we chatted and laughe