Self-respect takes the alarm. Is it
altogether genteel to live as we do? To be sure, we are accustomed to
it; we have it all systematized and arranged; the work of our own hands
suits us better than any we can hire; in fact, when we do hire, we are
discontented and uncomfortable,--for who will do for us what we will do
for ourselves? But when we have company! there's the rub, to get out all
our best things and put them back,--to cook the meals and wash the
dishes ingloriously,--and to make all appear as if we didn't do it, and
had servants like other people.
There, after all, is the rub. A want of hardy self-belief and
self-respect,--an unwillingness to face with dignity the actual facts
and necessities of our situation in life,--this, after all, is the worst
and most dangerous feature of the case. It is the same sort of pride
which makes Smilax think he must hire a waiter in white gloves, and get
up a circuitous dinner-party on English principles, to entertain a
friend from England. Because the friend in England lives in such and
such a style, he must make believe for a day that he lives so too, when
in fact it is a whirlwind in his domestic establishment equal to a
removal or a fire, and threatens the total extinction of Mrs. Smilax.
Now there are two principles of hospitality that people are very apt to
overlook.
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