They have a great care of children's education nowadays. We were neglected to a higher learning and abandoned to a larger fate. There were guests coming! We made off to don our best dresses and behaviors. We hoped to be worthy the gracious occasion. We meant to try. Life was at the door.
It was not mere shrewdness in St. Paul, surely, when he recommended the Romans so earnestly to be "given to hospitality"; but a wistfulness as well, and a certain longing for a high education to be given unto them; and it was his correspondents' welfare he had in mind, you remember, rather than the welfare of their guests, when he bade the Hebrews that they "be not forgetful to entertain strangers"; for—now note carefully the sequel—"for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
I have an old friend who is on his way, I am told by those in authority, to be one of our great modern psychologists. He gives anxious thought to the education of his children. Lately, he approached me seriously in the matter of his boy's educational needs. Would I talk them over with him? He wished to consult me. I looked for a careful discussion of "methods," and was ready with all my arguments concerning the Montessori teachings. Instead, he inquired, "Now when will you come and visit us? a real visit, I mean? That is what I wanted to ask you. It is with that that I am most concerned. That is exactly what Jack needs."
I am needed as a guest in their house, for the sake of the children! My heart rises at the thought! Cheered, I seem to see ahead, clearly, a time when, if we do not provide them with guests, we shall think that we have shamefully neglected our children's education; when we will no more deny them visitors, than we would now neglect to have them taught to read.
To love life for ourselves and others; to be forever interested in it; to be loyal to it, and that down to the grave; to dwell helpfully and appreciatively with one's kind; to understand others as generously as is possible to faulty human nature, and to make ourselves understood as much as is consistent with courtesy; these are, I take it, the fine flower of culture; here is all that I would dare call education, or presume to think of permanent importance.
And by no means, I feel sure, can youth be led to all this so readily, so happily, so effectually, as by means of the age-old virtue of hospitality. These things are things which guests bring with them, knowing it not, and bestow on those who are not aware of the bestowal.
And our most advanced ideal, that of "universal brotherhood" and a "federation of the world"—what is this, I ask you, but a glad sharing of life in a society to which all will be welcome, with bread and wine and greeting denied to none, and guest and host fulfilling an equal obligation?
This is the old manner of entertaining, and—I ask your patience—it is God's manner, not less. The gentle sympathy, the unfailing hospitality of my mother,—how gentle and understanding she was of all types which frequented the old house!—her patience and hospitality had in them, I like to think, some resemblance to that larger patience of Him in whose House of Life we do but for a time visit, some of us how gayly, how romantically, some how fretfully and inconsiderately, lingering past our time; some contributing but idle gossip; some lending to the hearth-fires the glow of poetic dreams; some adding truth or dignity of our own; some possessed of foibles and accomplished in failures; some shining with hopes of final successes that shall never be ours. Yet all of us, by the grace of God, and God be thanked, even so, adding somewhat to the meaning of life, edifying when we least know it, teaching when we are wholly unaware; helpful, instructive, even in our blunders, profiting others by the often profitless lessons and fables of our lives; enlightening when we are most ignorant of so doing, and even when our own lives are darkened. In a word, guests; and what is of even sweeter import, all of us understood, condoned, valued, pitied, loved, by the Master of the House; welcomed by his world that has long looked for our coming; served by his servants; waited upon by wind and wave and those others who do his bidding; afforded the bread of life to eat, given the wine of life to drink; warmed by the shining, welcoming sun; lighted by no less candles than the stars; and with rest and peace, and a bed at last for every one.