few of your friends at a time. If you choose them as being acquainted with each other, somebody will be offended at being included or excluded. If intellectual sympathy be your touchstone, for every one gratified there will be two miffed, and so on with all other classifications. Attempts have been made to obviate this difficulty. One lady proposed to consider as congenial all those who keep carriages, but the circle proved so very dull, that she was obliged to exert her ingenuity for another common quality by which to arrange her soirées. Another tried the expedient of inviting her fashionable friends at one time, her husband’s political friends at another, and the religious friends, whom both were desirous to propitiate, at another; but her task was as perplexing as that of the man who had the fox, the goose, and the bag of oats to ferry over the river in a boat that would hold but one of them at a time. So large parties have it; and in the murky shadow of this simulacrum of sociability we are likely to freeze for some time to come; certainly until all purely mercantile calculation is banished from our civilities.
It is with visiting as with travelling; those who would make the most of either must begin by learning to renounce. We cannot do everything; and to enjoy our friends we must curtail our acquaintances. “When we would kindle a fire, we do not begin by scattering the coals in every direction; so neither should we attempt to promote social feeling by making formal calls once or twice a year. If we give offence, so be it; it shows that there was nothing to lose. If we find ourselves left out of what is called fashionable society, let us bless our stars, and devote the time thus saved to something that we really like. What a gain there would be if anything drove us to living for ourselves and not for other people; for our friends, rather than for a world, which, after all our sacrifices, cares not a pin about us!
