e Northerner had
no idea of making a convenience of her almost unknown relative, and
declined; but the Southerner insisted that the visit would be a real
favor to herself. "That is," she added, "if you can be comfortable in
the way we live." The Northerner could hardly refuse longer, but having
certain fastidious ideas, she was rather startled on reaching New
Orleans to find that her cousin's family, in which there were eight
children, lived in a house of five rooms! She felt, in spite of her
precautions, she must be an intruder. But the husband of her cousin said
sweetly, "Where there is room in the heart, there is room in the
house," and she stayed, and had one of the most delightful experiences
of her life.

I am afraid few Northerners judged by this standard can be said to have
"room in the heart," though I remember gratefully a minister's family in
Massachusetts who lived in a little house and with narrow means, and yet
received with bright smiles all their friends from the towns around who
chose to stay with them. A brother minister would drive over with his
whole family and stay a few days, and no one ever suggested there was
not room for everybody. All the young collegiate cousins took this home
in their way on their vacation tramps, and brought with them as many of
their classmates as chose to come, never thinking it necessary to give
any warning of their approach. I have known as many as a dozen young
cousins to be gathered in the house at one time, the boys from Yale and
Amherst, girls from New York and Philadelphia, or from quiet country
boarding-schools,--one indeed came all the way from London,--and they
enjoyed themselves as much as the visitors in an English country-house.
They did not "ride to the meet," of course, or attend a county ball; but
they went blackberrying together, and they sang songs, and played duets,
and had games of croquet, and read French, and acted Shakespeare under
the apple-trees; they climbed a mountain, and rowed on the pond, and
took long botanical expeditions. The minister's wife was herself a
delectable cook, but she must have wrinkled her brow many a time in
planning how to get enough bread and butter to go round even with the
aid of the blackberries, and some of the young fellows had to sleep on
the hay in the barn, though happily they had a natural bath-tub provided
in a stream among the bushes behind the house.

The achievement of this hostess is the more notable because s