"The size of the nestler is comic, and its tiny beseeching weakness is compensated perfectly by the happy, patronizing look of the mother, who is a sort of high reposing Providence toward it. Welcome to the parents the puny struggler, strong in his weakness,--his little arms more irresistible than the soldier's, his lips touched with persuasion which Chatham and Pericles in manhood had not. His unaffected lamentations when he lifts up his voice on high, or, more beautiful, the sobbing child, soften all hearts to pity and to mirthful and clamorous compassion. His ignorance is more charming than all knowledge, and his little sins more bewitching than any virtue." Emerson was never a rich man, and his home was always so ordered as to come within the scope of his limited income; but it was always attractive and charming, and pervaded by an air of dignity and repose. And that in it he could dispense hospitality in the old royal manner is shown by the many times he invites Carlyle to come and spend a year with him, and seriously urges him to do so. Thoreau availed himself of such invitation, and spent months at a time in Emerson's home. One wonders if Mrs. Emerson received such instruction as her husband gives in the essay just mentioned, and if she profited by it:-- "I pray you, O excellent wife, not to cumber yourself and me to get a rich dinner for this man or this woman who has alighted at our gate, nor a bed-chamber made ready at too great a cost. These things, if they are curious in, they can get for a dollar at any village. But let this stranger, if he will, in your looks, in your accent and behavior, read your heart and earnestness, your thought and will,--which he cannot buy at any price in any village or city, and which he may well travel fifty miles, and dine sparely and sleep hard, in order to behold. Certainly let the board be spread, and let the bed be dressed for the traveller, but let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in these things. Honor to the house where they are simple to the verge of hardship, so that there the intellect is awake and reads the law of the universe, the soul worships truth and love, honor and courtesy flow into all deeds." If the American people had heeded such wise words as these the old-fashioned virtue of hospitality would not have become so rare among us. The "emphasis of hospitality" has been placed upon the material things to such an extent that one hardly dares to invite his friend now, unless it be to an elaborate feast; and the labor, to say nothing of the expense, of preparing the elaborate feast is so great that more and more we neglect to call our friends around us, and to bind their hearts to ours by loving and tender ministrations. Let us learn of Emerson the meaning of economy. He says:--