There are also people, apparently hospitable, who care little for the persons they invite,--so very little, indeed, that we do not easily discover what motive they have for inviting them. The answer may be that they dislike solitude so much that any guest is acceptable, or else that they want admirers for the beautiful arrangements and furniture of their houses; for what is the use of having beautiful things if there is nobody to appreciate them? Hosts of this class are amateur exhibitors, or they are like amateur actors who want an audience, and who will invite people to come and listen, not because they care for the people, but because it is discouraging to play to empty benches. These two classes of guests and hosts cannot exist without riches. The desire to be entertained ceases at once when it is known that the entertainment will be of a poor quality; and the desire to exhibit the internal arrangements of our houses ceases when we are too poor to do justice to the refinement of our taste. The story of the rich man who had many friends and saw them fall away from him when he became poor, which, under various forms, reappears in every age and is common to all literatures, is explained by these considerations. Bucklaw does not find Lord Ravenswood a valuable gratuitous innkeeper; and Ravenswood is not anxious to exhibit to Bucklaw the housekeeping at Wolf's Crag. But quite outside of parasite guests and exhibiting entertainers, there still remains the undeniable fact that if you like a rich man and a poor one equally well, you will prefer the rich man's hospitality for its greater convenience. Nay, more, you will rightly and excusably prefer the rich man's hospitality even if you like the poor man better, but find his household arrangements disagreeable, his wife fagged, worn, irritable, and ungracious, his children ill-bred, obtrusive, and dirty, himself unable to talk about anything rational on account of family interruptions, and scarcely his own better and higher self at all in the midst of his domestic plagues.[10]