other is a sacred due and is of every day. The latter should at least
be universal hospitality. It ought to be possible for man to wander
where he will over this little world of ours and never fail to find
free food and shelter and love. I know no greater shame in national
development than the commercialisation of the meal and the night's
lodging. It has been our great disinheritance.

But, of course, it would be folly to demand hospitality or to attempt
to enforce it. It is like the drunken cobbler who said to his wife,
"You don't love me, curse you, but by God you shall if I have to kill
you first." Even if a paternal government made a law that hospitality
was obligatory and that whoever asked a night's lodging must be
given it, then at one blow the whole idea of hospitality would be
annihilated. Hospitality must be something freely given, flowing
genially outward from the heart. When in the _Merchant of Venice_ the
Duke says, "Then must the Jew be merciful!" and Shylock asks with true
Jewish commercialism, "On what compulsion must I, tell me that?" then
Portia gives the eternal answer--

The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

Need it be said mercy and hospitality are in many respects one and the
same, and that when Portia says, "We do pray for mercy and that same
prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy," it is like
saying, "We pray for hospitality in heaven and that prayer teaches us
to render hospitality here," like "Forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive them that trespass against us." We shall never be homeless,