IF ours were a perfect state of society, constructed on the Golden Rule, animated and guided throughout by unselfish love for friend and neighbor, and charity for the needy, there would be no propriety in writing this chapter. Home, domestic comfort and happiness being our best earthly possessions, we would be eagerly willing to share them with others.

As society is constructed under a state of artificial civilization, and as our homes are kept and our households are run, the element of duty must interfere, or hospitality would become a lost art. Even where the spirit of this—one of the most venerable of virtues—is not wanting, conscience is called in to regulate the manner and the seasons in which it should be exercised.

As a corner-stone, assume, once for all, that a binding obligation rests on you to visit, and to receive visits, and to entertain friends, acquaintances and strangers in a style consistent with your means, at such times as may be consistent with more serious engagements. Having once issued an invitation, you are sacredly bound on the day named to give yourself completely to your guests. To invite people to dinner and then ask them to leave early in order that one may accept an invitation that one has received in the meantime, would seem impossible to a woman of right instincts—but it has been done, at least by women of social prominence.

It may sound harsh to assert that you have no right to accept hospitality for which you can never make any return in kind. The principle is, nevertheless, sound to the core.

Those who read the newspapers forty years ago will recall a characteristic incident in the early life of Colonel Ellsworth, the brilliant young lawyer who was one of the first notable victims of the Civil War. His struggles to gain a foothold in his profession were attended by many hardships and humiliating privations. Once, finding the man he was looking for on a matter of business, in a restaurant, he was invited to partake of the luncheon to which his acquaintance was just sitting down. Ellsworth was ravenously hungry, almost starving, in fact, but he declined courteously but firmly, asking permission to talk over the business that had brought him thither, while the other went on with the meal.

The brave young fellow, in telling the story in after years, confessed that he suffered positive agony at the sight and smell of the tempting food.

“I could not, in honor, accept hospitality I could not reciprocate,” was his simple explanation of his refusal. “I might starve, I could not sponge!”

Sponging—to put it plainly—is pauperism. The one who eats of your bread and salt becomes, in his own eyes—not in yours—your debtor. For the very genius of hospitality is to give, not expecting to receive again. (This by the way!)

I do not mean if your wealthy acquaintance invites you to a fifteen-course dinner, the cost of which equals your monthly income, that you are in honor or duty bound to bid her to an entertainment as elaborate, or that you suffer in her estimation, or by the loss of your self-respect. But by the acceptance of the invitation you bind yourself to reciprocation of some sort. If you can do nothing more, ask your hostess to afternoon tea in your own house or flat, and have a few congenial spirits to meet her there. It is the spirit in such a case that makes alive and keeps alive the genial glow of good will and cordial friendliness. The letter of commercial obligation, like for like, in degree, and not in kind, would kill true hospitality.

Your friend’s friend, introduced by him and calling on you, has a proved claim on your social offices. If you can not make a special entertainment for him, ask him to a family dinner, explaining that it is such, and make up in kindly welcome for the lack of lordly cheer. If it be a woman, invite her to luncheon with you and a friend or two, or to a drive, winding up with afternoon tea in some of the quietly elegant tea-rooms that seem to have been devised for the express use of people of generous impulses and slender purses. It is not the cost in coin of the realm that tells with the stranger, but the temper in which the tribute is offered.

“I do not ‘entertain’ in the sense in which the word is generally used,” wrote a distinguished woman to me once, hearing that I was to be in her neighborhood. “But I can not let you pass me by. Come on Thursday, and lunch with me, en tÊte-À-tÊte.”

I accepted gladly, and the memory of that meal, elegant in simplicity, shared with one whom my soul delights to honor, is as an apple of gold set in a picture of silver.

The stranger, as such, has a Scriptural claim on you, when circumstances make him your neighbor. In thousands of homes since the day when Abraham ran from his tent-door to constrain the thirsting and hungering travelers to accept such rest and refreshment as he could offer them during the heat of the day, angels have been entertained unawares in the guise of strangerhood.

“Did you know the B——’s before they came to our town?” asked an inquisitive New Englander of one of her near neighbors.

“No.”

“Then—you won’t mind my asking you?—why did you invite them to dinner on Thanksgiving Day? It’s made a deal of talk.”

Abraham’s disciple smiled.

“Because they were strangers, and seemed to be lonely. They are respectable, and they live on my street.”

Poetical justice requires me to add that the B——’s, who became the lifelong friends of their first hostess in the strange land, proved to be people of distinction whom the best citizens of the exclusive little town soon vied with one another in “cultivating.” In ignorance of their antecedents the imitator of the tent-holder of Mamre did her duty from the purest of motives.

Not one individual or one family has a moral or a social right to neglect the practise of hospitality. Unless one is confined to the house or bed by illness, one should visit and invite visits in return.

We are human beings, not hermit crabs.