VISITORS* 
155 
reputation on the dinners you give* For my own part, 
I was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a 
man’s house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, as by 
the parade one made about dining me, which I took to be 
a very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him 
so again. I think I shall never revisit those scenes. I 
should be proud to have for the motto of my cabin those 
lines of Spenser which one of my visitors inscribed on 
a yellow walnut leaf for a card : — 
" Arrived there, the little house they fill, 
Ne looke for entertainment where none was; 
Rest is their feast, and all things at their will: 
The noblest mind the best contentment has. ,, 
When Winslow, afterward governor of the Plymouth 
Colony, went with a companion on a visit of ceremony 
to Massassoit on foot through the woods, and arrived 
tired and hungry at his lodge, they were well received 
by the king, but nothing was said about eating that day. 
When the night arrived, to quote their own words, — 
“ He laid us on the bed with himself and his wife, they 
at the one end and we at the other, it being only 
plank, laid a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon 
them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, 
pressed by and upon us; so that we were worse weary 
of our lodging than of our journey.” At one o’clock 
the next day Massassoit “ brought two fishes that he had 
shot,” about thrice as big as a bream; “these being 
boiled, there were at least forty looked for a share in 
them. The most ate of them. This meal only we had 
in two nights and a day; and had not one of us bought 
a partridge, we had taken our journey fasting.” Fear¬ 
ing that they would be light-headed for want of food 
