his wife’s last testament every day, till none of the hostel customers knew that there was so much as a young hostess in all the house.  “Yes, gentlemen,” replied the old innkeeper.  “Yes, come in.  It is late, but I take you for true men, for you must know that my house is kept open only for such.”  So he took the large pilgrim party to their several apartments with his own eyes, and then set about a supper for those so late arrivals.  Stamping with his foot, he brought up the cook with the euphonious and eupeptic name, and that quick-witted domestic soon had a supper on the table that would have made a full man’s mouth water.  “The sight of all this,” said Matthew, as the under-cook laid the cloth and the trenchers, and set the salt and the bread in order—­“the sight of this cloth and of this forerunner of a supper begetteth in me a greater appetite to my food than I thought I had before.”  So supper came up; and first a heave-shoulder and a wave-breast were set on the table before them, in order to show that they must begin their meal with prayer and praise to God.  These two dishes were very fresh and good, and all the travellers did eat heartily well thereof.  The next was a bottle of wine red as blood.  So Gaius said to them, “Drink freely; this is the juice of the true vine that makes glad the heart of God and man.”  And they did drink and were very merry.  The next was a dish of milk well crumbed.  At the sight of which Gaius said, “Let the boys have that, that they may grow thereby.”  And so on, dish after dish, till the nuts came with the recitations and the riddles and the saws and the stories over the nuts.  Thus the happy party sat talking till the break of day.

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.