Unfortunate
are the fortunate if they are lifted into a sphere which is sapless of
delicacy of feeling for its own. Is this an intangible matter? Take
hospitality, for instance. Does it consist in astonishing the invited, in
overwhelming him with a sense of your own wealth, or felicity, or family,
or cleverness even; in trying to absorb him in your concerns, your
successes, your possessions, in simply what interests you? However
delightful all these may be, it is an offense to his individuality to
insist that he shall admire at the point of the social bayonet. How do
you treat the stranger? Do you adapt yourself and your surroundings to
him, or insist that he shall adapt himself to you? How often does the
stranger, the guest, sit in helpless agony in your circle (all of whom
know each other) at table or in the drawing-room, isolated and separate,
because all the talk is local and personal, about your little world, and
the affairs of your clique, and your petty interests, in which he or she
cannot possibly join? Ah! the Sioux Indian would not be so cruel as that
to a guest. There is no more refined torture to a sensitive person than
that. Is it only thoughtlessness? It is more than that.
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