them heart-withering to the delicate wife, and too severe a trial to
occur often. America is the land of subdivided fortunes, of a general
average of wealth and comfort, and there ought to be, therefore, an
understanding in the social basis far more simple than in the Old
World.

Many families of small fortunes know this,--they are quietly living
so,--but they have not the steadiness to share their daily average
living with a friend, a traveler, 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
teacup, and that there is a crack across one of your plates, he only
thinks, with a sigh of relief, "Well, mine aren'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 teacups, 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 accounts book, and a pleasure that is daily
and constant.

Under this head of hospitality, let us suppose a case. A traveler
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 traveler 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