GAIUS

"Gaius, mine host."--_Paul_.

Goodman Gaius was the head of a hostel that stood on the side of the

highway well on to the Celestial City. The hostess of the hostel was no

more, and the old hostel-keeper did all her once well-done work and his

own proper work into the bargain. Every day he inspected the whole house

with his own eyes, down even to the kitchen and the scullery. The good

woman had left our host an only daughter; but, "Keep her as much out of

sight as is possible," she said, and so fell asleep. And Gaius

remembered his wife's last testament every day, till none of the hostel

customers knew that there was so much as a young hostess in all the

house. "Yes, gentlemen," replied the old innkeeper. "Yes, come in. It

is late, but I take you for true men, for you must know that my house is

kept open only for such." So he took the large pilgrim party to their

several apartments with his own eyes, and then set about a supper for

those so late arrivals. Stamping with his foot, he brought up the cook

with the euphonious and eupeptic name, and that quick-witted domestic

soon had a supper on the table that would have made a full man's mouth

water. "The sight of all this," said Matthew, as the under-cook laid the

cloth and the trenchers, and set the salt and the bread in order--"the

sight of this cloth and of this forerunner of a supper begetteth in me a

greater appetite to my food than I thought I had before." So supper came

up; and first a heave-shoulder and a wave-breast were set on the table

before them, in order to show that they must begin their meal with prayer

and praise to God. These two dishes were very fresh and good, and all

the travellers did eat heartily well thereof. The next was a bottle of

wine red as blood. So Gaius said to them, "Drink freely; this is the

juice of the true vine that makes glad the heart of God and man." And

they did drink and were very merry. The next was a dish of milk well

crumbed. At the sight of which Gaius said, "Let the boys have that, that

they may grow thereby." And so on, dish after dish, till the nuts came

with the recitations and the riddles and the saws and the stories over

the nuts. Thus the happy party sat talking till the break of day.

1. Now, it is natural to remark that the first thing about a host is his

hospitality. And that, too, whether our host is but the head of a hostel

like Goodman Gaius, or the head of a well-appointed private house like

Gaius's neighbour, Mr. Mnason. The first and the last thing about a host

is his hospitality. "Say little and do much" is the example and the

injunction to all our housekeepers that Rabban Shammai draws out of the

eighteenth of Genesis. "Be like your father Abraham," he says, "on the

plains of Mamre, who only promised bread and water, but straightway set

Sarah to knead three measures of her finest meal, while he ran to the

herd and fetched a calf tender and good, and stood by the three men while

they did eat butter and milk under the tree. Make thy Thorah an

ordinance: say little and do much: and receive every man with a pleasant

expression of countenance." Now, this was exactly what Gaius our goodman

did that night, with one exception, which we shall be constrained to

attend to afterwards. "It is late," he said, "so we cannot conveniently

go out to seek food; but such as we have you shall be welcome to, if that

will content." At the same time Taste-that-which-is-good soon had a

supper sent up to the table fit for a prince: a supper of six courses at

that time in the morning, so that the sun was already in the sky when Old

Honest closed his casement.

"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 to spare the servants the

stairs; but, all the time, under the stairs, the servants are blushing

for the sometimes unaccountable stinginess of their unusually munificent

mistress. I shall give you "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a

little and there a little" of Aristotle upon munificence in little things

till you come up to his pagan standard. "There is a real greatness," he

says, "even in the way that some men will buy a toy to a child. Even in

the smallest matters the munificent man will act munificently!" As

Gaius, mine host, munificently did.

3. Speaking of children, what a night of entertainment good old Gaius

gave the children of the pilgrim party! "Let the boys have the crumbed

milk," he gave orders. "Butter and honey shall they eat," he exclaimed

over them as that brimming dish came up. "This was our Lord's dish when

He was a child," he said to the mother of the boys, "that He might know

to refuse the evil and to choose the good." Then they brought up a dish

of apples, and they were very good-tasted fruit. Then said Matthew, "May

we eat apples, since they were such by and with which the serpent

beguiled our first mother?" Then said Gaius,

"Apples were they by which we were beguiled,

Yet sin, not apples, hath our souls defiled.

Apples forbid, if eat, corrupt the blood.

To eat such, when commanded, does us good.

Drink of His flagons then, thou Church, His Dove,

And eat His apples who are sick of love."

Then said Matthew, "I make the scruple because I awhile since was sick

with eating of fruit." "Forbidden fruit," said the host, "will make you

sick, but not what our Lord hath tolerated." While they were thus

talking they were presented with another dish, and it was a dish of nuts.

Then said some at the table, "Nuts spoil tender teeth, especially the

teeth of children," which when Gaius heard, he said,

"Hard texts are nuts (I will not call them cheaters)

Whose shells do keep their kernels from the eaters;

Ope then the shells and you shall have the meat;

They here are brought for you to crack and eat."

Then Samuel whispered to his mother and said, "Mother, this is a very

good man's house; let us stay here a good while before we go any

farther." The which Gaius the host overhearing, said, "With a very good

will, my child."

4. Widower as old Gaius was, and never for a single hour forgot that he

was, there was a certain sweet and stately gallantry awakened in his

withered old heart at the sight of Christiana and Mercy, and especially

at the sight of Matthew and Mercy when they were seen together. He seems

to have fallen almost in love with that aged matron, as he called her,

and the days of his youth came back to him as he studied the young

damsel, who was to her as a daughter. And this set the loquacious old

innkeeper upon that famous oration about women which every man who has a

mother, or a wife, or a sister, or a daughter has by heart. And from

that he went on to discourse on the great advantages of an early

marriage. He was not the man, nor was he speaking to a mother who was

the woman, ever to become a vulgar and coarse-minded matchmaker; at the

same time, he liked to see Matthew and Mercy sent out on a message

together, leaving it to nature and to grace to do the rest. The pros and

cons of early marriage were often up at his hearty table, but he always

debated, and Gaius was a great debater, that true hospitality largely

consisted in throwing open the family circle to let young people get well

acquainted with one another in its peace and sweetness. And Gaius both

practised what he preached, and at the same time endorsed his watchful

wife's last testament, when he gave his daughter Phebe to James,

Christiana's second son, and thus was left alone, poor old Gaius, when

the happy honeymoon party started upward from his hostel door.

5. Their next host was one Mr. Mnason, a Cyprusian by nation, and an old

disciple. "How far have you come to-day?" he asked. "From the house of

Gaius our friend," they said. "I promise you," said he, "you have gone a

good stitch; you may well be weary; sit down." So they sat down. "Our

great want a while since," said Old Honest, "was harbour and good

company, and now I hope we have both." "For harbour," said the host,

"you see what it is, but for good company that will appear in the trial."

After they were a little rested Old Honest again asked his host if there

were any store of good people in that town; and, "How," he said, "shall

we do to see some of them? For the sight of good men to them that are

going on pilgrimage is like to the appearing of the moon and stars to

them that are sailing upon the seas." Then Mr. Mnason stamped with his

foot and his daughter Grace came up, when he sent her out for five of his

friends in the town, saying that he had a guest or two in his house at

present to whom he would like to introduce them.

Now, this is another of the good qualities of a good host, to know the

best and the most suitable people in the town, and to be on such terms

with them that on short notice they will step across to help to entertain

such travellers as had come to Mr. Mnason's table. And it is an

excellent thing to be sure that when we are so invited we shall not only

get a good dinner, but also, as good "kitchen" with our dinner, good

company and good conversation. It is nothing short of a fine art to

gather together and to seat suitably beside one another good and suitable

people as Mr. and Miss Mnason did in their hospitable house that

afternoon. And then, as to the talk: let the host and the hostess

introduce the guests, and then let the guests introduce their own topics.

And as far as possible, in a city and a day like this, let our topics be

books rather than people. And let the books be the books that the guests

have read rather than those that the host and the hostess have read.

Books are a fine subject for a talk at table. Only, let great readers

order their learned and literary talk so as not to lead the less learned

into temptation. There is no finer exercise of fine feeling than to be

able to carry on a conversation about matters that other people present

are ignorant of, and at the same time to interest them, to set them at

ease, and to make them forget both you and themselves. I had a letter

the other day from an English Church clergyman, in which he tells me that

his bishop is coming this month to his vicarage for a kind of visitation

and retreat, and that they are to have William Law's _Characters and

Characteristics_ read aloud to them when the bishop and the assembled

clergy are at their meals. For my part, I would rather hear a good all-

round talk on that book by the bishop and his clergy after they had all

read the book over and over again at home. But such readings at

assembled meals have all along been a feature of the best fraternal life

in the Church of England and in some of the sister churches.

6. Now, after dining and supping repeatedly with garrulous old Gaius,

and with the all-but-silent Mr. Mnason, I have come home ruminating again

and again on this--that a good host, the best host, lets his guests talk

while he attends to the table. If the truth may even be whispered to

one's-self about a table that one has just left, Gaius did his best to

spoil his good supper by his own over-garrulity. It was good talk that

he entertained his waiting guests with, but we may have too much of a

good thing. His oration in praise of women was an excellent oration, had

it been delivered in another house than his own; and, say, when he was

asked to give the health of Christiana, or of Matthew the bridegroom and

Mercy the bride, it would then have been perfect; but not in his own

house, and not when his guests were waiting for their supper. On the

other hand, you should have seen that perfect gentleman, Mr. Mnason. For

that true old Christian and old English gentleman never once opened his

mouth after he had set his guests a-talking. He was too busy watching

when any man's dish was again empty. He was too much delighted to see

that every one of his guests was having his punctual share of the supper,

and at the same time his full share of the talk. Mr. Fearing's small

voice was far more pleasant to Mr. Mnason than his own voice was in his

own best story. As I opened my own door the other night after supping

with Mr. and Miss Mnason, I said to myself--One thing I have again seen

and learned to-night, and that is, that a host, and still more a hostess,

should talk less at their own table than their most silent, most bashful,

and most backward guest. "Make this an ordinance for thee," said Rabban

Shammai to his sons in the law; "receive all thy guests with a pleasant

expression of countenance, and then say little and do much."