NASSAU HOSPITALITY. 204 
The pleasant and agreeable attentions which are shown by the 
local clergy of Nassau and some prominent church members to 
ecclesiastics from abroad, who, by letter or otherwise, make them- 
selves known, may be inferred from the following extract from 
a short descriptive and highly eulogistic account of Nassau, com- 
municated to a New York religious paper by aclergyman. He 
writes under the date of March 25, 1876: ‘‘The hospitality of 
the inhabitants is as warm and genial as their clime. The polite 
cordiality extended to non-residents makes them forget they are 
strangers inastrange land.” A burrowing animal from its little 
hole in the ground is about as well qualified to describe a universe 
which it has not seen, as is a Doctor of Divinity to accurately 
portray the hospitality of a place, because the doors of certain 
good, pious and appreciative persons have always been flung wide 
open at the approach of one of God’s favored ambassadors. We 
doubt if the learned doctor was invited to the high-toned enter- 
tainments, where cards and wine and the waltz shortened the 
hours of midnight and of the early morning, and helped to place 
in full accord the best blood of the Bahamas with the aristocratic 
and royal blood of the mother country. And we know from ob- 
servation and experience, what any one may know is true from 
the nature of the case, that forty-nine out of fifty strangers so- 
journing in Nassau will never know, except from report, that 
' there is such a thing asa gencrous hospitality anywhere upon 
the island. This is not exceptional, for the same thing is and - 
must be true in all places where strangers arrive regularly at short 
intervals and in large numbers. In a small, poor city, they con- 
stitute rich golden placers to be sedulously worked, and not dis- 
guised angels to be entertained. ; 
We all know by report, and not a few by personal experience, 
the warmth and glow of a hospitality, noble and unselfish, that 
was indigenous to the soil, and flourished with tropical luxuriance 
