Hospitality

“ By one’s manners, by one’s talk, by a little memento or token here and there, one pays for hospitality received. In return for hospitality of the body—food or lodging, one should always give hospitality of the mind or spirit, sympathy, fellow feeling, bonhomie, a readiness to be at the disposal of your host. ”

“ The hotel was a small one. Dinner would be served for the hotel guests a trifle earlier, so that they might the sooner leave the way clear for me. This had been proposed by Madame Blet herself, the proprietress, and was intended no doubt for a fine piece of hospitality. For me the strict hotel rules were to be slackened; the fine democracy of hotel life, where one guest is as good as another, if he but pay his account, was to be overruled in my favor; for me the sun was to be advanced, and the moon set at a new pace in the heavens! ”

“ In short, he returns the hospitality of the host and hostess, with a hospitality of his own—a hospitality that, in its consideration and regard for the rights of others, is one of the beautiful things that makes life worth the living. ”

“ And the guests, in their turn, repay the hospitalities with other hospitalities of their own. And we find, in this glorious twentieth century it is our fortune to be living in, a wholesome, generous hospitality that puts to shame the history-famed achievements of kings and princes of yore. ”

“ It is customary in travelling through this country, where towns are few and taverns scarce and vile, to stop at the planters’ houses along the road, and pay for your bed and board in the morning just as if you had stayed at an inn. The custom is rather repugnant to our Old World notions of hospitality, but it appears to me an excellent one for both the host and his guest. ”

“ I use the word hospitality advisedly, for his effort always seemed to be to treat me as a guest whom he must entertain, and distract from observing his ailments, rather than as a physician whose business it was to discover and remedy them. ”

“ Young, welcomes the coming and speeds the parting guest in the old way of hospitality; takes a practical, helpful interest in his excursions, climbs, and scientific pursuits; and provides a menu that tastes like things one eats at home. Everything in the hotel, which can accommodate 150 guests, is orderly without being mechanical. ”

“ Hospitality is the index to breeding and culture at all times. But there are certain ceremonious occasions that warrant the invited hospitality—and such are the occasions that we will study in this chapter.
First, we find the wedding anniversary claiming the ceremony of many invited guests and much festive entertainment. Thus, wedding anniversaries offer an excellent opportunity for hospitality. Then there is the occasion of the young daughter's introduction to society—an event which is important, indeed, and requires the utmost hospitality on the part of host and hostess alike. ”

“ From the sixteenth century the canons of refined hospitality prescribed that every one with aristocratic pretensions should be able to offer to his guests an entertainment of that nature, or to take part in it himself when bidden elsewhere. ”

“ The hospitality the stranger receives at their hands is nothing short of marvellous, and no greater insult can be inflicted than to offer to pay for accommodations. I find any retrospective glance over the days I spent among these people coloured with much pleasure when I review incidents connected with my contact with them. ”

“ We hear of the 'glory of hospitality,' England's pre-eminent boast,—by the rules of which all tables, from the table of the twenty-shilling freeholder to the table in the baron's hall and abbey refectory, were open at the dinner hour to all comers, without stint or reserve, or question asked: to every man, according to his degree, who chose to ask for it, there was free fare and free lodging ”

“ The place has no hotel or inn of any kind, but a house is easily got to serve our purpose, as much food as we want is forced upon us by these good-natured people; and if it is not quite English hospitality, it is very near it. ”

“ Hospitality has, I think, been too much praised by travellers as a proof of goodness of heart, when, in my opinion, indiscriminate hospitality is rather a criterion by which you may form a tolerable estimate of the indolence or vacancy of a head ”

“ HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging. ”

“ He has real hospitality, and not only hospitality of hearth and home, the giving of food and a night’s shelter, but also a more vital hospitality, that of mind and heart. He wants to know all about you. 96He asks you the human questions. ”

“ When entertaining guests from the city, fresh flowers should be brought into the house every day. The meal served should be simple; elaborate course dinners are not in good form when the facilities of the hostess do not permit them. Nothing ostentatious should be attempted; just simple, homelike hospitality such as is offered the neighbors and friends of the village. ”

“ The same hospitality is shown in the average householder’s desire to surround himself with as many people as possible, to entertain as many as possible, and to have as many as possible sampling his wines and his coffee and his cigars. ”

“ Her mother is a grand dame of the old school who has opened her home to a few choice paid guests who feel, as I do, that it is far more refreshing socially to partake of the gracious hospitality of her secluded home than to live in the noisy, vulgar hotels of the city. ”

“ Her hospitality was something exquisite; she had the gift which so many women lack, of being able to make themselves and their houses belong entirely to a guest's pleasure,—that charming surrender for the moment of themselves and whatever belongs to them, so that they make a part of one's own life that can never be forgotten. ”

“ Many of the older-fashioned school mourn the decay of the very thorough and hearty hospitality of times back, and have often complained that they saw too many flowers and too little food at modern dinner parties. ”

“ There is an emanation from the heart in genuine hospitality which cannot be described, but is immediately felt, and puts the stranger at once at his ease. ”

“ When two states established public hospitality, it was necessary that in each state persons should be appointed to show hospitality to, and watch over the interests of all persons who came from the state connected by hospitality. ”

“ Besides, I now considered myself as bound by the laws of hospitality, to a people who had treated me with so much expense and magnificence. ”

“ The study of tavern history often brings to light much evidence of sad domestic changes. Many a cherished and beautiful home, rich in annals of family prosperity and private hospitality, ended its days as a tavern. ”

“ guests who appeal, not to your hospitality, but to your hospitalality; ”

“ It was difficult to define her beyond saying that she seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so much from any exaggerated instinct of hospitality as because she could not sustain life except in a crowd. ”

“ One Autumn night, in Sudbury town,
Across the meadows bare and brown,
The windows of the wayside inn
Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves
Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves
Their crimson curtains rent and thin.
As ancient is this hostelry
As any in the land may be,
Built in the old Colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way,
With ampler hospitality;
A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
[2] With weather-stains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
And creaking and uneven floors,
And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall.
A region of repose it seems, ”

“ Hospitality still survives among foreigners, although it is buried under false pride among the poorest Americans. ”

“ God's messenger sent down to thee; do thou
With courtesy receive him; rise and bow;
And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave
Permission first his heavenly feet to lave;
Then lay before him all thou hast; allow
No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow,
Or mar thy hospitality; no wave
Of mortal tumult to obliterate
The soul's marmoreal calmness: Grief should be,
Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate;
Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free;
Strong to consume small troubles; to commend
Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end. ”

“ Home is the place where the out-of-date lingers, and where modern conveniences that add to the complexity and the worry of life have no corner. At the modern hotel you are a document in a pigeon-hole—a number, not a person—an accident, not substantive. The chambermaid does not wait on you, but on the room. You get up, breakfast, dine, according to the times fixed by the management. You cannot have your bath before a certain hour, and the bacon is not frizzled until nine o’clock. Luncheon is probably elastic because it is cold, and potatoes can be kept hot without difficulty. ”

“ Those who live on the other side of the President’s house are the secretaries, diplomatists, and a few wealthy citizens. There is no hotel in this quarter, but there are one or two boarding-houses, and (what we had been lucky enough to secure ourselves) furnished lodgings, in which you have every thing but board. Your dinner is sent you from a French cook’s near by, and your servant gets your breakfast—a plan which gives you the advantage of dining at your own hour, choosing your own society, and of having covers for a friend or two whenever it suits your humor, and at half an hour’s warning. ”

“ The little hotel of the town was a bright and sunny place, like the jovial face of the clean little woman who kept it, and who trotted about talking always—talking to the customers in the taproom, and to the maids in the kitchen, and to the passers-by when she could hail them from the windows; talking, as good-natured women with large mouths and small noses always do, in season and out. ”

“ The hotel is probably not one of the best in the city. A chaos of negro lads throng about the dinner and supper table, pretending to be waiters, but they do nothing more than spring hither and thither, round one another, without either dexterity or order, and move about everything on the table, without rhyme or reason which I can discover. ”

“ The noble dining-hall, with its delicately tinted walls, its pillars and gilded roof, with neatly dressed waiters, and the master of ceremonies patrolling the room seeing to the comfort of the guests, the arrangements of their places, and that each servant did his duty, gave a zest to one’s appetite which the tempting viands increased a hundred fold, and the soups, fish, relèves, entrées, game, relishes, vegetables, pastry, and dessert of the menu differed from the bill of fare of the previous day as does light from darkness, sweet from bitter. ”

“ Hotel is a French term, derived from hostil, a lordly house, a palace. The designation Public House, signifying a house of public resort for refreshment and conviviality, is a modern substitute for Tavern, derived from the Latin taberna, a hut, a wooden booth; frequently also for Inn, or rather, as originally written, Inne, which expressed the Anglo-Saxon for a mansion. And here we may at once observe that by far the majority of our mediæval inns and Hostelries [see Hotel] grew out of the mansions of the nobility during the prolonged absence of their owners. ”

“ At the hotel bar, you drink a glass of beer with the local celebrity and thus come into immediate touch with, the oldest inhabitant. After dinner, seated on a bench on the sidewalk, you smoke a pipe and discuss the affairs of the nation or of the town—usually the latter—with the man who in the morning offered to give you a lift and never will understand why you declined. Invariably you receive courteous replies and in kindly interest are met more than half way. ”

“ I am that rosy-faced, perfectly groomed, elegant gentleman of leisure who saunters through the halls and corridors at tea time and at dinner time, and who confirms the out-of-town guest in his opinion that he has selected as a place to stop the one hotel which is the resort of fashion. ”

“ A great many people like to spend months in a comfortable hotel, lounging on the piazzas, playing lawn-tennis, taking a morning ride or afternoon drive, making an occasional picnic excursion up some mountain cañon, getting up charades, playing at private theatricals, dancing, flirting, floating along with more or less sentiment and only the weariness that comes when there are no duties. ”

“ All the bells of the house, it seems to me, are ringing, most of them very impatiently, and in the area before the kitchen windows are six or eight idle waiters, and four or five female scullions, playing, quarrelling, scolding and screaming; the language of both men and women more profane and indecent than anything I have ever before chanced to hear, and every word audible in every room in this quarter of the hotel. ”

“ In other directions, booths, stalls, and tables are fixed; where the hungry eat, the thirsty drink, and the merry-hearted indulge in potent libations. The waiters are in a constant state of locomotion. Rhenish wine sparkles here; confectionary glitters there; and fruit looks bright and tempting in a third place. No guest turns round to eye the company; because he is intent upon the luxuries which invite his immediate attention--or he is in close conversation with an intimate friend, or a beloved female. They talk and laugh,--and the present seems to be the happiest moment of their lives. ”