TRUE HOSPITALITY
No matter what happens—should there be illness and even death in the family—a hospitable person will not allow the stranger within her gates to feel that she is in the way, or her presence an inconvenience. There is no greater cruelty than that of allowing a guest in the home to feel that matters would run more smoothly were she absent. Only better breeding on the part of the visitor than is possessed by her hostess will prevent her leaving the house and returning to her home. Should sudden illness in the family occur, the considerate person will leave. But this must be permitted only under protest. To invite a friend to one’s house, and then seem to find her presence unwelcome is only a degree less cruel than confining a bird in a cage, where he can not forage for himself, and slowly starving him. If one has not the hospitable instinct developed strongly enough to feel the right sentiment, let him feign it, or refuse to attempt to entertain friends. The person under one’s roof should be, for the time, sacred, and the host who does not feel this is altogether lacking in the finer instincts that accompany good breeding.
We know one home in which hospitality is dispensed in a way no guest ever forgets. From the time the visitor enters the doors of this House Beautiful she is, as it were, enwrapped in an atmosphere of loving consideration impossible to describe. One guest, visiting there with her children, was horrified at their being taken suddenly ill with grippe,—so ill that to travel with them just then was dangerous. She was hundreds of miles away from home with the possibility of the children’s being confined to the house for some days to come. The physician summoned confirmed her fears. The distressed mother knew only too well what an inconvenience illness is,—especially in a friend’s house instead of in one’s own home.
AN IDEAL HOSTESS
All the members of the household united in making the disconcerted woman feel that this home was the one and only place in which the little ones should have been seized with the prevailing epidemic; that it was a pleasure to have them there under any circumstances; that to wait on them and their mother was a privilege. The sweet-voiced, sweet-faced hostess, herself an invalid at this time, drew the anxious visitor down on the bed beside her and kissed her as she said:
“Dear child! try to believe that you and yours are as welcome here as in your own dear mother’s home.”
Surely of such is the Kingdom of Heaven!