Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1886 — The Agreeable Guest. [ARTICLE]

The Agreeable Guest.

The Swedenborgian theory that each person has his “sphere,” which is perceived as an effect of whose cause one is ignorant, is a theory quite borne out by experimental experience. Our likes and dislikes are very largely founded on matters as intangible as were the reasons of Dr. Fell. Nowhere is this truth so strongly felt as when receiving a guest in tete-a-tete in one’s own apartment. The friend who is what the Italians call sim patica, a quality for which there is no English equivalent, is the rarest of blessings. One does not expect this of the average five hundred friends who may yet be very entertaining, and be each warmly regarded by the hostess. But there is a type of woman who is the most disagreeable of guests, and from whom one turns away instinctively without being able to give any very tangible reason why. Out of sight she may not be altogether out of mind, nor by any means outside the circle of one’s friendly wishes for her best prosperity and enjoyment. But in personal presence she is an irritating and jarring force. It is the woman who is so crude and obtuse by nature that she does not even know she is crude; the woman to whom the fine art of conversation is as unknown as is the sculptor’s power to the stone-mason; the woman who goes rough-shod over all your preferences and tendencies, and is so crude that she never dreams wherein her rudeness lies. Her conversation consists largely in a series of direct questions, and of the most inappropriate conclusions drawn from the answers she forces from you. Her

presence is like a material weight in the atmosphere, and on her departure you are ready to ring the joy bells of relief. In delightful contrast is the agreeable guest, the woman whose cultivation is so fine that it invests her as with an atmosphere; whose conversation is that of subtle art, so suggestive, so stimulating, that it opens a vista of all high and delightful’ possibilities. Calling upon her you are entertained not with conventional remarks of wind, or weather, or social mo. ements, but with some fine thought suggested at the moment. Perhaps you have had an experience of this kind you ■will never lose out of your life. You had called on a lady whose parlor was in the hands of the decorators, and whose paintings and bric-a-brac were, for the time, removed, with one exception. On the mantel rested a fine French photograph of Millet’s picture of the earth—a stretch of level land, the sun sinking below the horizon, and in the far distance a shepherd with his flock. The picture is new to you, and in reply to a word of comment the hostess expresses her recognition of the subtle spiritual meaning portrayed in this work, and you go out from your call refreshed, uplifted. It was only a word, a glimpse, yet it opened to you new vistas. Such friends are a gift of the gods, and such experiences are among the endearing influences of life. Western Traveler.