“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.