s a conviction that all was of the best. But I never was good
at bluffing. I had always to let food speak for itself. 'It's cheap' was
the only paean that in Soho's bad moments ever occurred to me, and this
of course I did not utter. And was it so cheap, after all? Soho induces
a certain optimism. A bill there was always larger than I had thought it
would be.

Every one, even the richest and most munificent of men, pays much
by cheque more light-heartedly than he pays little in specie. In
restaurants I should have liked always to give cheques. But in any
restaurant I was so much more often seen as guest than as host that I
never felt sure the proprietor would trust me. Only in my club did I
know the luxury, or rather the painlessness, of entertaining by cheque.
A cheque--especially if it is a club cheque, as supplied for the use of
members, not a leaf torn out of his own book--makes so little mark on
any man' s imagination. He dashes off some words and figures, he signs
his name (with that vague momentary pleasure which the sight of his
own signature anywhere gives him), he walks away and forgets. Offering
hospitality in my club, I was inwardly calm. But even there I did not
glow (though my face and manner, I hoped, glowed). If my guest was by
nature a guest, I managed to forget somewhat that I myself was a guest
by nature. But if, as now and then happened, my guest was a true and
habitual host, I did feel that we were in an absurdly false relation;
and it was not without difficulty that I could restrain myself from
saying to him 'This is all very well, you know, but--frankly: your place
is at the head of your own table.'

The host as guest is far, far worse than the guest as host. He never
even passes muster. The guest, in virtue of a certain hability that is
part of his natural equipment, can more or less ape the ways of a host.
But the host, with his more positive temperament, does not even attempt
the graces of a guest. By 'graces' I do not mean to imply anything
artificial. The guest's manners are, rather, as wild flowers springing
from good rich soil--the soil of genuine modesty and gratitude. He
honourably wishes to please in return for the pleasure he is receiving.
He wonders that people should be so kind to him, and, without knowing
it, is very kind to them. But the host, as I said earlier in this essay,
is a guest against his own will. That is the root of the mischief. He
feels that it is more blessed, etc.,