BE SIMPLE IN HOSPITALITY.
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I PRAY you, O excellent wife, not to cumber yourself and me to get a rich dinner for this man or this woman who has alighted at our gate, or a bed-chamber made ready at too great a cost. These things they can get for a dollar at any village. But let this stranger, if he will, see in your looks, in your accent, and behavior and will, that which he can not buy at any price in any village or city, and which he may well travel fifty miles and dine sparsely and sleep hard in order to behold. Certainly, let the board be spread, and let the bed be dressed for the traveler; but let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in these things. Honor to the house where they are simple to the verge of hardship, so that there the intellect is awake and reads the laws of the universe.—Ralph Waldo Emerson.