one. Society is, after all, a recreation and a delight, and ought
to be sought for with pleasurable motives, not with a consciousness
of rectitude and justice.

My own belief is that every one has a perfect right to choose his
own circle, and to make it large or small as he desires. It is a
monstrous thing to hold that, if an agreeable or desirable person
comes to a place, one has but to leave a piece of pasteboard at his
door to entail upon him the duty of coming round till he finds one
at home, and of disporting himself gingerly, like a dancing bear
among the teacups. A card ought to be a species of charity, left on
solitary strangers, to give them the chance of coming, if they
like, to see the leaver of it, or as a preliminary to a real
invitation. It ought to be a ticket of admission, which a man may
use or not as he likes, not a legal summons. That any one should
return a call should be a compliment and an honour, not regarded as
the mere discharging of a compulsory duty.

I have heard fair ladies complain of the boredom they endured at
tea-parties; they speak of themselves as the martyrs and victims
of a sense of duty. If such people talked of the duty of visiting
the sick and afflicted as a thing which their conception of
Christian love entailed upon them, which they performed,
reluctantly and unwillingly, from a sense of obligation, I should
respect them deeply and profoundly. But I have not often found that
the people who complain most of their social duties, and who
discharge them most sedulously, complain because such duties
interrupt a course of Christian beneficence. It is, indeed, rather
the other way; it is generally true that those who see a good deal
of society (from a sense of duty) and find it dull, are the people