The idea of entertaining, of being hospitable, is a pleasant and fascinating one to most young men; but the act soon gets to be a bore to all but a few curiously constituted individuals. With these hospitality becomes first a passion and then a faith—a faith the practice of which, in the cases of some of its professors, reminds one strongly of the hints on such subjects scattered about the New Testament. Most of us feel, when our friends leave us, a certain sort of satisfaction, not unlike that of paying a bill; they have been done for, and can’t expect anything more for a long time. Such thoughts never occur to your really hospitable man. Long years of narrow means can not hinder him from keeping open house for whoever wants to come to him, and setting the best of everything before all comers. He has no notion of giving you anything but the best he can command. He asks himself not, “Ought I to invite A or B? do I owe him anything?” but, “Would A or B like to come here?” Give me these men’s houses for real enjoyment, though you never get anything very choice there—(how can a man produce old wine who gives his oldest every day?)—seldom much elbow-room or orderly arrangement. The high arts of gastronomy and scientific drinking, so much valued in our highly-civilized community, are wholly unheeded by him, are altogether above him, are cultivated, in fact, by quite another set, who have very little of the genuine spirit of hospitality in them; from whose tables, should one by chance happen upon them, one rises, certainly with a feeling of satisfaction and expansion, chiefly physical, but entirely without that expansion of heart which one gets at the scramble of the hospitable man. So that we are driven to remark, even in such every-day matters as these, that it is the invisible, the spiritual, which, after all, gives value and reality even to dinners; and, with Solomon, to prefer to the most touching _diner Russe_ the dinner of herbs where love is, though I trust that neither we nor Solomon should object to well-dressed cutlets with our salad, if they happen to be going. XLIV. There are few of us who do not like to see a man living a brave and righteous life, so long as he keeps clear of us; and still fewer who _do_ like to be in constant contact with one who, not content with so living himself, is always coming across them, and laying bare to them their own faint-heartedness, and sloth, and meanness. The latter, no doubt, inspires the deeper feeling, and lays hold with a firmer grip of the men he does lay hold of, but they are few. For men can’t keep always up to high pressure till they have found firm ground to build upon, altogether outside of themselves; and it is hard to be thankful and fair to those who are showing us, time after time, that our foothold is nothing but shifting sand. XLV.