Hosting overnight visitors

Source A: an original contemporary non-fiction-style account.

Before my friends arrived, I cleaned rooms they would never enter and bought ingredients for a breakfast I had never cooked. By the time the doorbell rang, I was too tired to be particularly welcoming. They asked whether we could order pizza and sit in the kitchen. The elaborate meal I had planned was competing with the evening they actually wanted.

I have become a less impressive host and, I hope, a better one. There are clean towels, somewhere to put a bag and a question about what people would enjoy doing. I still like preparing food, but I try not to make guests responsible for admiring the effort. Hospitality should offer room for another person's preferences, not recruit an audience for my domestic competence. Sometimes the most generous thing I can provide is enough ease for a visitor to say they would rather have toast.

Source B: an original letter in a nineteenth-century voice. This is a period-voice simulation, not an archival document.

Dear Niece, do not be persuaded that careful preparation is the enemy of a comfortable visit. A room warmed before arrival and a bed properly made spare the guest from asking for what ought already to have been considered. Ease is often the result of work performed before anyone rings the bell. Neglect does not become kindness merely by calling itself informality.

The danger lies in continuing to display that work after the visitor has arrived. If every dish must be praised and every arrangement defended, the guest has exchanged travel for a new set of duties. Prepare thoughtfully, then allow the occasion to breathe. Offer what is needed without keeping an account of gratitude, and be ready to alter a plan when it does not suit. The best preparations are not those everyone notices. They are those that make noticing unnecessary because people can settle comfortably into one another's company.

Refer to the whole of both sources. Compare the writers’ perspectives on making guests feel welcome and how they convey those perspectives. Support your comparison with evidence from both sources.