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.
ENTERTAINING THE STRANGER
“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.
POETIC JUSTICE