Last time I wrote about something that Thoreau wasn’t good at, and today I was about do the same today… but I changed my mind. First, listen to him describe hosting guests to came to visit him in his little cabin:
“If one guest came he sometimes partook of my frugal meal, and it was no interruption to conversation to be stirring a hasty-pudding, or watching the rising and maturing of a loaf of bread in the ashes, in the meanwhile. But if twenty came and sat in my house there was nothing said about dinner, though there might be bread enough for two, more than if eating were a forsaken habit; but we naturally practised abstinence; and this was never felt to be an offence against hospitality, but the most proper and considerate course.… I could entertain thus a thousand as well as twenty; and if any ever went away disappointed or hungry from my house when they found me at home, they may depend upon it that I sympathized with them at least. So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old. You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give.”
How convenient, I was thinking, to redefine hospitality when you’re too cheap to feed your guests (I’m assuming these were invited guests), especially when you frequently enjoy the hospitality of others, as Henry did. Continue reading
The Curious People 