, if
you were sure he would go away after dinner. The trouble about him is
not so much that he comes as that he won't go. He hangs around. If
you once open your door to him, there is no getting rid of him; and
some of his followers, it must be confessed, are just like him. You
must resist them both, or they will never flee. But if they do flee
after a day's tarry, do not complain. You protest against turning your
house into a hotel. Why, the hotelry is the least irksome part of the
whole business, when your guests are uninteresting. It is not the
supper or the bed that costs, but keeping people going after supper is
over and before bedtime is come. Never complain, if you have nothing
worse to do than to feed or house your guests for a day or an hour.

On the other hand, if they are people you like, how much better to have
them come so than not to at all! People cannot often make long
visits,--people that are worth anything,--people who use life; and they
are the only ones that are worth anything. And if you cannot get your
good things in the lump, are you going to refuse them altogether? By
no means. You are going to take them by driblets, and if you will only
be sensible and not pout, but keep your tin pan right side up, you will
find that golden showers will drizzle through all your life. So, with
never a nugget in your chest, you shall die rich. If you can stop
over-night with your friend, you have no sand-grain, but a very
respectable boulder. For a night is infinite. Daytime is well enough
for business, but it is little worth for happiness. You sit down to a
book, to a picture, to a friend, and the first you know it is time to
get dinner, or time to eat it, or time for the train, or you must put
out your dried apples, or set the bread to rising, or something breaks
in impertinently and chokes you at flood-tide. But the night has no
end. Everything is done but that which you would be forever doing.
The curtains are drawn, the lamp is lighted and veiled into exquisite
soft shadowiness. All the world is far off. All its din and dole
strike into the bank of darkness that envelops you and are lost to your
tranced sense. In all the world are only your friend and you, and then
you strike out your oars, silver-sounding, into the shoreless night.

But the night comes to an end, you say. No, it does not. It is you
that come to an end. You grow sleepy, clod that you are. But as you
don't think, when yo