[HOSPITALITIES.]
IT does the heart good to read of some light-footed troubadour or reverend pilgrim trudging from gate to gate, all the way across a strange country, everywhere welcome as an expected guest, and given the liberty of the host's kingdom. Chroniclers give us pretty pictures of the household sitting about the dusty palmer, listening to his pious and spirited homily; of the errant singer, wrapped in his worn velvet cloak, delighting young maids and children with the old burden of Roncesvalles, or with the tale of that dreamer Rudel who crossed seas to find his unseen lady-love at Tripoli, and to die, satisfactorily, in her arms. Whether the master of the castle had subsequent cause to regret the shelter proffered to his birds of passage, posterity shall never learn. For those were the days of chivalry; and the brave bounty which accepted the wayfarers without question was able to overlook a deficiency, if such there were, in the family silver. Of this best sort, too, was the hospitality of Alcinoüs to Ulysses, treating him like a king, and dreaming not of his hidden kingliness. Spanish courtesy yet keeps a show of heart-whole giving: "This is thy house," an Andalusian tells his visitor. An Indian, in his forest wigwam, does yet better. If he abide you at all, with your scalp at its accustomed altitude, he tenders whatsoever he calls his, and would scorn to conceal from you the innermost recesses of his savage larder.
"Is he not hospitable," quaintly asks one of our American essayists, "who entertains thoughts?"
Think of the unlicensed generosity of the Roberds-men, dealing out what had but just become theirs by right of might, and of our niggardly modern dispensation! of that Duke of Newcastle, the lavish splendor of whose receptions bewildered all England; or of another social peer, Edward, Earl of Derby, "in whose grave, since 1572," said Thomas Fuller, "hospitality hath in a manner been laid asleep." Timon began as bravely as any of these. Waiving all formal recognition of his royal liberality, he made his frank exordium in the banquet-hall:—
——"My lords! ceremony
Was but devised at first to set a gloss
On faint deeds, hollow welcomes,
Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown;
But where there is true friendship, there needs none;
Pray sit...."
Hospitality hath been called threefold: for one's family, of necessity; for strangers, of courtesy; for the poor, of charity. Friendship pushes its privilege to the broad extreme, and loses its sense of ownership.
"Cot or cabin have I none,
And sing the more that thou hast one."
The twin playwrights of the reign of Queen Bess set up their tent "on the Bankside;" alternately wearing "the same cloathes and clokes," and having but one bench of the house between them, which the twain "did so much admire"!