Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book: A Practical and Exhaustive Manual of Cookery and Housekeeping

not exercise a grace. The former times were _not_ better in all respects than these. But for divers reasons they were more hospitable times. It was inevitable that private houses should keep open doors when taverns, and even houses of entertainment, were few and far apart upon main-traveled roads, and utterly wanting to the traveler who pushed his way into the back country unknown except to the pioneer. If the stranger were not welcomed to the home of him whose house stood nearest to the wayside, he was shelterless in night or storm. There is the less need for the exercise of undiscriminating hospitality when inn and hotel “blaze” the track into the wilderness. There is none the less occasion for asking our friends to enter our homes and to partake of the food which is a symbol of the good-will we have for them, our disposition to share with them the best blessings granted to man in this world—home loves and home joys. True hospitality but widens the circle and makes the guest “at home.” Artificial hospitality seeks or accepts a convenient season for making the everyday life of the home seem what it is _not_ to the stranger within our gates. Our forbears said: “Come in and take pot-luck with us.” An old Virginian told me that, as a boy, he was a visitor in a country house in the central part of the state, when a carriage drove up to the gate, and James Madison, then president of the United States, alighted. The lady of the manor was sitting upon the front porch, a bit of needle-work in hand. She arose, cordial and dignified, to receive her guest. As her chief butler, a far more consequential personage than his mistress, bustled out with a footman or two at his heels to see what could be done for the distinguished arrival, she said to him in a gentle “aside,” audible to the boy visitor: “James! see that a plate is put upon the table for Mr. Madison.” Southern hospitality was a proverb then and for many a year