1. Now, it is natural to remark that the first thing about a host is his hospitality. And that, too, whether our host is but the head of a hostel like Goodman Gaius, or the head of a well-appointed private house like Gaius's neighbour, Mr. Mnason. The first and the last thing about a host is his hospitality. "Say little and do much" is the example and the injunction to all our housekeepers that Rabban Shammai draws out of the eighteenth of Genesis. "Be like your father Abraham," he says, "on the plains of Mamre, who only promised bread and water, but straightway set Sarah to knead three measures of her finest meal, while he ran to the herd and fetched a calf tender and good, and stood by the three men while they did eat butter and milk under the tree. Make thy Thorah an ordinance: say little and do much: and receive every man with a pleasant expression of countenance." Now, this was exactly what Gaius our goodman did that night, with one exception, which we shall be constrained to attend to afterwards. "It is late," he said, "so we cannot conveniently go out to seek food; but such as we have you shall be welcome to, if that will content." At the same time Taste-that-which-is-good soon had a supper sent up to the table fit for a prince: a supper of six courses at that time in the morning, so that the sun was already in the sky when Old Honest closed his casement. "Dining in company is a divine institution," says Mr. Edward White, in his delightful _Minor Moralities of Life_. "Let Soyer's art be honoured among all men," he goes on. "Cookery distinguishes mankind from the beasts that perish. Happy is the woman whose daily table is the result of forethought. Her husband shall rise up and call her blessed. It is piteous when the culinary art is neglected in our young women's education. Let them, as St. Peter says, imitate Sarah. Let them see how that venerable princess went quickly to her kneading-trough and oven and prepared an extempore collation of cakes and pilau for the angels. How few ladies, whether Gentiles or Jewesses, could do the like in the present day!"