VISITORS. 
I think that I love society as much as most, and 
am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker 
for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my 
way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit 
out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my busi¬ 
ness called me thither. 
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two 
for friendship, three for society. When visitors came 
in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the 
third chair for them all, but they generally economized 
the room by standing up. It is surprising how many 
great men and women a small house will contain. I 
have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, 
at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without 
being aware that we had come very near to one another. 
Many of our houses, both public and private, with their 
almost innumerable apartments, their huge halls and 
their cellars for the storage of wines and other muni^ons 
of peace, appear to me extravagantly large for their 
inhabitants. They are so vast and magnificent that the 
latter seem to be only vermin which infest them. I am 
( 152 ) 
