and that he is conferring rather
than accepting a favour. He does not adjust himself. He forgets his
place. He leads the conversation. He tries genially to draw you out.
He never comments on the goodness of the food or wine. He looks at his
watch abruptly and says he must be off. He doesn't say he has had a
delightful time. In fact, his place is at the head of his own table.

His own table, over his own cellar, under his own roof--it is only there
that you see him at his best. To a club or restaurant he may sometimes
invite you, but not there, not there, my child, do you get the full
savour of his quality. In life or literature there has been no better
host than Old Wardle. Appalling though he would have been as a guest in
club or restaurant, it is hardly less painful to think of him as a host
there. At Dingley Dell, with an ample gesture, he made you free of all
that was his. He could not have given you a club or a restaurant. Nor,
when you come to think of it, did he give you Dingley Dell. The place
remained his. None knew better than Old Wardle that this was so.
Hospitality, as we have agreed, is not one of the most deep-rooted
instincts in man, whereas the sense of possession certainly is. Not even
Old Wardle was a communist. 'This,' you may be sure he said to himself,
'is my roof, these are my horses, that's a picture of my dear old
grandfather.' And 'This,' he would say to us, 'is my roof: sleep soundly
under it. These are my horses: ride them. That's a portrait of my dear
old grandfather: have a good look at it.' But he did not ask us to walk
off with any of these things. Not even what he actually did give us
would he regard as having passed out of his possession. 'That,' he would
muse if we were torpid after dinner, 'is my roast beef,' and 'That,' if
we staggered on the way to bed, 'is my cold milk punch.' 'But surely,'
you interrupt me, 'to give and then not feel that one has given is the
very best of all ways of giving.' I agree. I hope you didn't think I was
trying to disparage Old Wardle. I was merely keeping my promise to point
out that from among the motives of even the best hosts pride and egoism
are not absent.

Every virtue, as we were taught in youth, is a mean between two
extremes; and I think any virtue is the better understood by us if we
glance at the vice on either side of it. I take it that the virtue of
hospitality stands midway between churlishness and mere ostentation. Far
to the left of the