yourself that you come back to them and their
flatteries after any amount of previous neglect.
I have no opinion of Vapours, but he is wanted
in this illustration of doubtful hospitality.

"Do you know, Mr. Vapours," cries Mrs.
Fingerglass, when Vapours enters the drawing-
room on the occasion of this grand reconciliation
scene—"do you know, that I've almost made
up my mind not to speak to you? To be all
this time without once coming near me!"

"But, I assure you," urges Mr. Vapours,
"that I called very assiduously, and you were
never at home."

"Impossible!" says the lady. "My people
never told me that you had been. Did you leave
a card?"

"Half a card-basketful," retorts Mr.
Vapours, a little nettled.

"Then the servants must be to blame. I
must positively speak to them about it.
Servants now, you know," she adds, throwing up
her eyes, "are such wretches. But I'm not
going to scold you," she continues; "I'm too
glad to see you, for that."

"Not going to scold him!" This was how she
forgave Vapours, in the noblest and most
charitable manner, for having been so long
neglected, speaking as if she really believed he
was in the wrong. It certainly was a triumph
of humbug, but Mr. Vapours—who had just
observed his new invention in the grate—fell
into the deception as if it had been the most
genuine thing in the world, and when Mrs.
Fingerglass said, "To show you that I bear no
malice, I shall expect you to take me down to
dinner," he offered his elbow at once, and they
descended the stairs together.

Lions were roaring all round the table. The
man who had just written a series of letters
to the Times, which was attracting much
attention; the great traveller, who had published
a successful account of his triumphs over wild
beasts and wild men somewhere or other "up
country;" the new artist, whose picture at the
Royal Academy was the event of the year; the
inventor, who had constructed a target which
could defy any kind of cannon; the other
inventor, who had made a gun which could
perforate any target which had yet appeared; such
persons as these were here as a kind of relief
to the mere pecuniary or titled eminence of the
remainder ot the guests. Not one soul who
was not remarkable for something—for his
wealth, his rank, or his reputation.

Now let no one suppose for a moment that I
am complaining of the worthy Fingerglasses for
asking whom they please to their table. What
I am in doubt about, is whether such entertaining
ought to be called hospitality. If the Fingerglasses
like to give a series of dinners to all
these distinguished people, by all means let
such banquets come off. If our friends like to
show off their plate to persons who, having
rival plate of their own, either despise the
Fingerglass silver as inferior, or loathe the sight of
it as superior, to their own, by all means let
them do so. But call things by their right
names, and the right name for this kind of
feasting is not hospitality. Call it an inclination to
get your friends about you, a desire to have it
said that such and such persons are seen at
your table, call it sociability, call it ostentation,
call it display—but do not call it hospitality.

But is nobody, then, hospitable? Is this
virtue absolutely dead among us? Are we
to look on the dark side of things only? Far
from it.

In the house of my friend Greatheart—at
whose house any man may be proud to visit,
whose friendship any man may be proud to enjoy
—at that house you meet guests of a different
kind to those one encounters ordinarily, as just
described, at the Fingerglass establishment. I
do not say that you never meet with a clever or
distinguished man at Greatheart's. Such persons
appear in their turn, but certainly a large
portion of the guests are of a class to whom a
social meeting round a well-furnished dinner-
table is something of a treat. Of course I do
not mean that Greatheart asks the beggars out
of the street to his table, but I do honestly
believe that he is greatly guided in the choice of
his guests by the thought that he will be doing
good in some way or other to the person he
invites. You may do good to people whom you
ask to dinner in other ways besides the mere
filling of their stomachs. A young man, for
instance, cast loose upon London alone, will
require, as a positive necessity of his nature, to
have some opportunities of social intercourse,
and if with his superiors, so much the better.
You help to form the manners and habits of
such youngsters by asking them to your house,
besides aiding to keep them out of mischief.

It is useless to deny that Greatheart's wife's
brother is little better than a death's head at a
feast. This little man—he is old now, and
many crosses have spoiled him—has probably
made as utter a failure of life, as far as we
outsiders can judge, as any person living. In all
the different lines of business in which he has
been started from time to time, he has invariably
broken down. What was that attempt at print-
selling, which was his last effort, but a hideous
mockery? Who wanted those engravings after
Ostade and Carl du Jardin, which this unfortunate
man was always to be found—in the front
parlour in Maddox-street—sticking down upon
card-board? The room in Maddox-street was
taken, and the stock of prints bought as a
desperate venture, and the printed circular was
sent out announcing that Mr. James Groves—
which was the little gentleman's name—had on
view a vast collection of rare and choice
engravings, chiefly from the works of the old
masters, to which the attention of connoisseurs
and others was invited. Well, and who went
to that room in Maddox-street? Did Sir Folio
Porter go there?—he was the gentleman who
gave three hundred guineas the other day for a
Rembrandt etching, and there is a proverb in
existence which designates very clearly the kind
of persons whose money is soon parted from