“Dining in company is a divine institution,” says Mr. Edward White, in his delightful Minor Moralities of Life.  “Let Soyer’s art be honoured among all men,” he goes on.  “Cookery distinguishes mankind from the beasts that perish.  Happy is the woman whose daily table is the result of forethought.  Her husband shall rise up and call her blessed.  It is piteous when the culinary art is neglected in our young women’s education.  Let them, as St. Peter says, imitate Sarah.  Let them see how that venerable princess went quickly to her kneading-trough and oven and prepared an extempore collation of cakes and pilau for the angels.  How few ladies, whether Gentiles or Jewesses, could do the like in the present day!”

2.  The wistful and punctilious attention that Goodman Gaius paid to each individual guest of his was a fine feature in his munificent hospitality.  He made every one who crossed his doorstep, down even to Mr. Fearing, feel at once at home, such was his exquisite as well as his munificent hospitality.  “Come, sir,” he said, clapping that white-faced and trembling pilgrim on the shoulder, “come, sir, be of good cheer, you are welcome to me and to my house; and what thou hast a mind to, that call for freely:  for what thou wouldst have my servants will do for thee, and they will do it for thee with a ready mind.”  All the same, for a long time Mr. Fearing was mortally afraid of the servants.  He would as soon have thought of stamping his foot for a duchess to come up as for any of Gaius’s serving-maids.  He was afraid to make any noise in his room lest all the house should hear it.  He was afraid to touch anything in the room lest it should fall and be broken.  We ourselves, with all our assumed ease and elaborate abandon, are often afraid to ring our bell even in an inn.  Mr. Fearing would as soon have pulled the tail of a rattlesnake.  But before their sojourn was over, the Guide was amazed at Mr. Fearing, for that hare-hearted pilgrim would be doing things in the house that he himself would scarcely do who had been in the house a thousand times.  It was Gaius’s exuberant heartiness that had demoralised Mr. Fearing and made him almost too forward even for a wayside inn.  In little things also Gaius, mine host, showed his sensitive and solicitous hospitality.  We all know housekeepers, not to say innkeepers, and not otherwise ungenerous housekeepers either who will grudge us a sixpennyworth of sticks and coals in a cold night, and that, too, in a room furnished to overflowing by Morton Brothers or the Messrs. Maple.  We take a candlestick and a dozen candles with us in the boot of the carriage when we wish to read or write late into the night in that great house.  Another housekeeper, who would give you her only daughter with her wealthy dowry, will sometimes be seen by all in her house to grudge you a fresh cup of afternoon tea when you drop in to see her and her daughter.  She says to herself that it is