t?

But--I constrain you in the act of rushing off to pack your things--one
moment: this essay has yet to be finished. We have yet to glance at
those two extremes between which the mean is good guestship. Far to the
right of the good guest, we descry the parasite; far to the left, the
churl again. Not the same churl, perhaps. We do not know that Corin's
master was ever sampled as a guest. I am inclined to call yonder speck
Dante--Dante Alighieri, of whom we do know that he received during his
exile much hospitality from many hosts and repaid them by writing how
bitter was the bread in their houses, and how steep the stairs were. To
think of dour Dante as a guest is less dispiriting only than to think
what he would have been as a host had it ever occurred to him to
entertain any one or anything except a deep regard for Beatrice; and
one turns with positive relief to have a glimpse of the parasite--Mr.
Smurge, I presume, 'whose gratitude was as boundless as his appetite,
and his presence as unsought as it appeared to be inevitable.' But now,
how gracious and admirable is the central figure--radiating gratitude,
but not too much of it; never intrusive, ever within call; full of
dignity, yet all amenable; quiet, yet lively; never echoing, ever
amplifying; never contradicting, but often lighting the way to truth; an
ornament, an inspiration, anywhere.

Such is he. But who is he? It is easier to confess a defect than to
claim a quality. I have told you that when I lived in London I was
nothing as a host; but I will not claim to have been a perfect guest.
Nor indeed was I. I was a good one, but, looking back, I see myself
not quite in the centre--slightly to the left, slightly to the churlish
side. I was rather too quiet, and I did sometimes contradict. And,
though I always liked to be invited anywhere, I very often preferred to
stay at home. If any one hereafter shall form a collection of the notes
written by me in reply to invitations, I am afraid he will gradually
suppose me to have been more in request than ever I really was, and to
have been also a great invalid, and a great traveller.

A POINT TO BE REMEMBERED BY VERY EMINENT MEN 1918.

One of the things a man best remembers in later years is the first time
he set eyes on some illustrious elder whose achievements had already
inflamed him to special reverence. In almost every autobiography you
will find recorded the thrill of that first sight. With the thrill,
p