If a fellow-guest at the Grand Hotel of the Universe comes in at two in the morning, and going humming along the corridor to his room, flings his boot down upon the floor at his door with a resounding blow that awakens all neighboring sleepers, you may cover him with expletives, and consign him in imagination to a hundred direful dooms, but nevertheless he goes unpunished. Or you may suddenly confront him in all the majesty of nocturnal dishabille, and admonish him severely of the wicked selfishness of his ways. But the probability is that you will have either an extremely amused audience, who will "guy" your appearance without mercy, or receive a surly rejoinder in the form of a boot or a volley of vituperation. In any event, the school of manners will not be honored by the exercises. Yet the Hog family is not American, nor is it by any means peculiar to this country. The Lady Mavourneen who said with enthusiasm that she could travel without insult from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and that every American of the other sex seemed to make himself her protector, said only what is generally true of the American. He is naturally courteous and invincibly good-natured. Indeed, it is his good-nature which has permitted the family Hog to develop to such proportions. A man enters a hotel "as if it belonged to him." Will he not be forced to pay for his accommodation--and roundly? Shall he not take his ease in his inn? Is he not willing to settle for all the food, drink, comfort, trouble, that he may require or occasion? Shall he put himself out for others? If number one does not look out for itself, who will look out for it? And to all this Jonathan good-naturedly assents. If number one takes more than his share of the sofa, Jonathan moves up. If number one puts his feet on a chair, Jonathan does not stare. If number one still more grossly demonstrates his porcine lineage, Jonathan dislikes to make trouble--until number one comes to despise those whom he insults, and plainly expects every circle to bow to the sovereignty of selfishness. This is a fatal form of good-nature, but it has a not unkindly origin. It springs from a social condition in which everybody is expected to help everybody else, because everybody needs help as in a frontier community. Indeed, in many a rural neighborhood still, this spirit of lending a hand is supreme. Everybody expects to submit to inconvenience, because he knows that he will require others to submit.