ven't had hospitality offered to you. All our debts are wiped out
and our slate clean; now we will have our own closed doors, no company
and no trouble, and our best china shall repose undisturbed on its
shelves. Mrs. Bogus says she never could exist in the way that Mrs.
Easygo does, with a constant drip of company,--two or three to
breakfast one day, half a dozen to dinner the next, and little evening
gatherings once or twice a week. It must keep her house in confusion
all the time; yet, for real social feeling, real exchange of thought
and opinion, there is more of it in one half-hour at Mrs. Easygo's
than in a dozen of Mrs. Bogus's great parties.

"The fact is, that Mrs. Easygo really does like the society of
human beings. She is genuinely and heartily social; and, in
consequence, though she has very limited means, and no money to
spend in giving great entertainments, her domestic establishment is
a sort of social exchange, where more friendships are formed, more
real acquaintance made, and more agreeable hours spent, than in any
other place that can be named. She never has large parties,--great
general pay-days of social debts,--but small, well-chosen circles of
people, selected so thoughtfully, with a view to the pleasure which
congenial persons give each other, as to make the invitation an act
of real personal kindness. She always manages to have something for
the entertainment of her friends, so that they are not reduced to
the simple alternative of gaping at each other's dresses and
eating lobster salad and ice-cream. There is either some choice
music, or a reading of fine poetry, or a well-acted charade, or a
portfolio of photographs and pictures, to enliven the hour and
start conversation; and as the people are skillfully chosen with
reference to each other, as there is no hurry or heat or confusion,
conversation, in its best sense, can bubble up, fresh, genuine, clear,
and sparkling as a woodland spring, and one goes away really rested
and refreshed. The slight entertainment provided is just enough to
enable you to eat salt together in Arab fashion,--not enough to form
the leading feature of the evening. A cup of tea and a basket of
cake, or a salver of ices, silently passed at quiet intervals, do
not interrupt conversation or overload the stomach."

"The fact is," said I, "that the art of society among us Anglo-Saxons
is yet in its rudest stages. We are not, as a race, social and
confiding, like the French