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MAXIMS FOR THE CONDUCT OF LIFE.

if he be disappointed, his kindness will grow cool.

"If a man flatter and commend you to your face, or to one that he thinks will tell you of it, it is a thousand to one, either he hath deceived or abused you some way, or means to do so: remember the fable of the fox, commending the singing of the crow, when she had somewhat in her mouth that the fox liked.

"If a person be choleric, passionate, and give you ill language, remember rather to pity him than to be moved into anger and passion with him; for most certainly that man is in a distemper and disorder; observe him calmly, and you shall see him in so much perturbation and disturbance, that you will easily believe he is not a pattern to be imitated by you; and therefore return not choler nor anger, for angry words; for you do but put yourself into a kind of frenzy, because you see him so. Be sure you return not railing, reproaching, or reviling for reviling, for it doth but kindle more heat, and you will find silence, or, at least, very gentle words, the most exquisite revenge of reproaches that can be; for either it will cure the distemper in the other, and make him see and be sorry for his passion, or it will torment him with more perturbation and disturbance. But howsoever it keeps your innoceuce, gives you deserved reputation of wisdom and moderation, and keeps up the serenity and composure of your mind; whereas passion and anger do make a man unfit for any thing that becomes him, as a man or a Christian.

"Some men are excellent in knowledge of husbandry; some of planting, some of gardening, some in the mathematics, some in one kind, some in another: in all your conversation, learn as near as you can, wherein the skill and excellence of any person lies, and put him upon talk of that subject, and ob serve it, and keep it in memory or writing; by this means you will glean up the worth and excellence of every person you meet with, and at an easy rate put together that which may be for your use upon all occasions.

"Converse not with a liar, or a swearer, or a man of obscene or wanton language; for either he will corrupt you, or at least it will hazard your reputation to be one of the like making; and, if it do neither, yet will fill your memory with such discourses that will be troublesome to you in aftertime, and the returns of the remembrance of the passages which you long since heard of this nature, will haunt you when your thoughts should be better employed.

No. III. Vol. L-N. S.

"Now as concerning your own speech, and how you are to manage it; something may be collected out of what goes before, but I shall add some things else.

"Let your speech be true, never speak any thing for a truth which you know, or believe, to be false: it is a great sin against God, that gave you a tongue to speak your mind and not to speak a lie; it is a great offence against humanity itself, for where there is no truth there can be no safe society between man and man: and it is an injury to the speaker; for, besides the base disreputation it casts upon him, it doth in time bring a man to that baseness of mind, that he can scarce tell how to tell truth, or to avoid lying, even when he hath no colour of necessity for it; and in time he comes to such a pass, that as another man caunot believe he tells a truth, so he himself scarce knows when he tells a lie: and, observe it, a lie ever returns with discovery and shame at the last.

"As you must be careful not to lie, so you must avoid coming near it; you must not equivocate, you must not speak that absolutely which you have but by hearsay, or relation; you must not speak that as upon knowledge, which you have but by conjecture or opinion only.

"Let your words be few, especially when your betters, or strangers, or men of more experience, or understanding, are in place; for you do yourself at once two great mischiefs. 1. You betray and discover your own weakness and folly. 2. You rob yourself of that opportunity which you might otherwise have to gain knowledge, wisdom, and experience, by hearing those that you silence by your impertinent talking.

"Be not over earnest, loud, or violent in talking, for it is unseemly; and earnest and loud talking makes you over-shoot and lose your business; when you should be considering and pondering your thoughts, and how to express them significantly to the purpose, you are striving to keep your tongue going, and to silence an opponent, not with reasou, but with noise.

"Be careful not to interrupt another in his talk, hear him out, you will understand him the better, and be able to give him the better auswer; it may be, if you will give him leave, he will say somewhat more than you have yet heard, or well understood, or that which you did not expect.

"Always before you speak, especially where the business is of moment, consider before hand, weigh the sense of your mind, which you intend to utter, think upon the expres

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sions you intend to use, that they be significaut, pertinent, and inoffensive; and whereas it is the ordinary course of inconsiderate persons to speak their words, and then to think, or not to think till they speak; think first, and speak after, if it be in any matter of moment or seriousness.

"Be willing to speak well of the absent, if you do not know they deserve il: by this means you shall make yourself many friends, and sometimes an undeserved commendation is not lost to the party to whom it is given. I have known some men, that have met with an undeserved commendation, out of shame of being worse than they have been reported, secretly to take up practices answerable to their commendation, and so to make themselves as good as they are reported.

"Be sure you give not an ill report to any that you are not sure deserves it: and in most cases, though a man deserves ill, yet you should be very sparing to report him so; in some cases indeed you are bound, in honesty and justice, to give that account concerning the demerit or default of a person that he deserves; as, namely, when you are called to give testimony for the ending of a controversy, or when the concealing of it may harden and encourage a person in an evil way, or bring another into danger; in such cases, the very duty of charity binds you to speak your knowledge; nay, your probable fear or suspicion of such a person, so it be done for prevention of greater inconvenience, and in love, and espe cially if the discovery be made to a person that hath a superintendence, care, or authority over the person complained of; for this is an act of love and duty. But for any person maliciously, busily, and with intent to scandalize another, to be whispering tales and stories to the prejudice of another, this is a fault if you know any good of any person, speak it as you have opportunity; if you know any evil, speak it, if it be really and prudently done, for the good of him, and the safety of others; otherwise rather chuse to say nothing, than to say any thing reproachfully, maliciously, or officiously, to his prejudice.

"Avoid swearing in your ordinary communication, unless called to it by the magistrate, and not only the grosser oaths, but the lesser; and not only oaths, but imprecations, earnest and deep protestations: as you have the commendable example of good men to justify a solemn oath before a magistrate, so you have the precept of our Saviour forbidding it otherwise.

"Avoid scoffing, and bitter, and biting jeering, and jesting, especially at your friend's

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condition, credit, deformity, or natural defects of any person; for these leave a deep im pression, and are a most apparent isjustice; for, were you so used, you would take it inwardly amiss; and many times such an injury costs a man dear, when he little thinks

of it.

"Be very careful that you give no reproach. ful, bitter, menacing or spiteful words to any person; nay, not to servants, or other personS of an inferior condition; and that upon these considerations. 1. There is not the meanest person but you may stand in need of him in one kind, or at some time or other; good words make friends, bad words make enemies; it is the best prudence in the world to make as many friends as honestly as you can, especially when it may be done at so easy a rate as a good word; and it is the greatest folly that can be to make an enemy by ill words, which do not at all any good to the party that useth them. 2. Il words provoke il words again, and commonly such ill words as are gained by such a prevocation, especially of an inferior, stick closer, and wound deeper, than such as come unprovoked by ill language, from an equal. 3. Where faults are committed, they may, and by a superior, must be reproved; but let it be done without reproaches, or bitterness, otherwise it loseth its due end and use, aud, instead of reforming the offence, exasperates the offender, and makes him worse, and gives him the cudgel to strike again, because it discovers your own weakness when you are reprehending another, and lays you justly open to his reproof, and makes your own but scorned and disesteemed: I press this the rather, he cause most ordinarily ill language is the folly of children, and of weak and passionate people.

"If there be occasion for you to speak in any company, always be careful, if you speak at all, to speak latest, especially if strangers are in company; for, by this means, you will have the advantage of knowing the sense, judgment, temper, and relations of others, which may be a great light and help to you in ordering your speech; and you will better know the inclination of the company, and speak with more advantage and acceptation, and with more security against giving of

fence.

"Be careful that you commend not yourselves; it is the most unuseful and ungrateful thing that can be; you should avoid flattery from others, but especially decline flattering of yourselves, it is a sign your reputation- is small and sinking, if your own tongues must be your flatterers or commenders; and it is a

fulsome and unpleasant thing for others to be resolute against it, and when your resolubear it.

"Abhor all foul, unclean, and obscene speeches; it is a sign that the heart is corrupt, and such kind of speeches will make it worse, it will taint and corrupt yourselves, and those that hear it, and brings disreputation to those that use it.

"Never use any prophane speeches, nor make jests of scripture expressions; when yon use the names of God, or of Christ, or any passages or words of the holy scripture, use them with reverence and seriousness, and not lightly, vainly, or scurrilously, for it is taking the name of God in vain.

"If you hear of any unseemly expressions used in religious exercises, you must be careful to forget and not to publish them, or if you at all mention them, let it be with pity and scrrow, not with derision or reproach.

tion is once known, you will never be solicited to it. The Rechabites were commanded by their father not to drink wine, and they obeyed it, and had a blessing for it; my command to you is not so strict, I allow you the moderate use of wine and strong drink at your meals, I only forbid you the excess, or the unnecessary use of it, and those places and companies, and artifices that are temptations

to it.

"Be frugal of your time, it is one of the best jewels we have; and to that end avoid idleness, it consumes your time, and lays you open to worse inconveniences; let your recreations be healthy, and creditable, and moderate, without too much expence of time or money: go not to stage-plays, they are a most profuse wasting of time; value time by that estimate we would have of it when we want it; what would not a sick man give for those portions of time, of health, that he had formerly improvidently wasted?

"The vanity of young men in loving fine cloaths, and new fashions, and valuing themselves by them, is one of the most childish

"Do not upbraid any, or deride any man for a pious, strict, or religious conversation; for if he be sincere, you dishonour God and injure him if he be an hypocrite, yet it is more than you know, or if you know him to be such, yet his external piety and strictness is not his fault, but his dissimulation and hy-pieces of fully that can be, and the occasion pocrisy, and though his hypocrisy be to be detested, his external piety and religion is to be commended, not derided.

“I would have you always keep a habit of the fear of God upon your heart; consider his presence, order your life as in his presence; consider that he always sees you, beholds and takes notice of you, and especially whether you carry yourself answerable to this great deliverance; it is one of those talents for which he will expect an account from you.

"I would have you frequently and thankfully consider of the great love of God in Jesus Christ, whom he hath given to be the instructor, and governor, and sacritice for the sins of you and all mankind; through whom, upon repentance, you have assurance of the remis sion of sins, and eternal life; and frequently consider how great an engagement this is upon you, and all mankind, to live according to such a hope and such a mercy.

"Be very moderate in eating and drinking; drunkenness is the great vice of the time; and by drunkenness, I do mean, not only gross drunkenness, but also tipling, drinking excessively, and immoderately, or more than is convenient or necessary; avoid those companies that are given to it, come not into those places that are devoted to that beastly vice; namely, taverns and ale-houses; avoid and refuse those devices that are used to occasion it, as drinking and pledging of healths:

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of great profuseness and undoing of young men: avoid curiosity and too much expensiveness in your apparel: let your apparel be comely, plain, decent, cleanly, not curious or costly; it is the sign of a weak head-piece, to be sick for every new fashion, or to think himself the better in it, or the worse without it.

"Be very careful to speak truth, and beware of lying; as lying is displeasing to God, so it is offensive to man, and always, at the latter end, returns to the reproach or disadvantage of him that useth it; it is an evidence of a weak and unmanly mind. Be careful that you believe not hastily strange news and stories, and be much more careful that you do not report them, though at the second hand; for if it prove an untruth, as commonly strange stories prove so, it brings an imputation of levity upon him that reports it, and possibly some disadvantage to others.

"Run not into debt, either for wares sold, or money borrowed; be content to want things that are not of absolute necessity, rather than to run upon the score; such a man pays, at the latter end, a third part more than the principal comes to, and is in perpetual servitude to his creditors, lives uncomfortably, is necessitated to increase his debts to stop his creditors mouths, and many times falls into desperate courses.

"Lastly, I shall conclude with one advice

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more, without the observance whereof my
labour in writing this long epistle will be pro-
bably fruitless: be not wise in your own con-
ceit, this is the unhappy error, and many times
the ruin of young men especially: they are
usually rash, giddy, and inconsiderate, and
yet extremely confident of that which they
have least reason to trust; namely, their own
understanding, which reuders them most re-glory of God, and your own benefit.”❤
served from them that are willing and best

able to advise them, impatient of reproof, love
to be flattered, and so become incapable of
good and wise counsel, till their follies have
reduced them to extreme straits and inconve
niencies.

"And thus I have, in this long epistle, given you the means how you may improve both your own sickness and recovery, to the

THE MYSTERIOUS GUESTS.

thing else than fools. Here the matter rested. In this opinion Du Long was still more confirmed when at the end of a few weeks one of his guests, an elderly man, thus addressed

house; and if you will acquiesce in a certain whim, it is probable that we might continue for a long time to spend our money with you."

"Your honours have only to give your commands; an innkeeper is by profession the slave of all the whims that throng to him from all the four quarters of the globe."

ABOUT sixty years ago, two Englishmen one day arrived at Calais in the Dover packet. They did not take up their quarters at the hotel of Mons. Dessein, on whom the author of the Sentimental Journey bestowed such cele-him :-" Landlord," said he, "we like your brity, but went to an obscure inn kept by a man of the name of Du Long. They desired to have his best apartments, spent a great deal of money, relished the produce of his wretched kitchen, and thought his adulterated wine perfectly genuine. From day to day Du Long supposed that they would continue their journey and proceed to the capital; for that they had come merely to see Calais was an idea too absurd to enter any body's head. But so far from continuing their journey and proceeding to the capital, they did not even inspect what was worth seeing at Calais; for except going out now and then to shoot snipes, they kept close at home, eating, drinking, and doing nothing.

"You have, to be sure," continued the Englishman," had a prodigiously large beast painted on your sign; but your house is only a fly among inus; it scarcely contains three tolerable rooms, and unfortunately all of them look into the street. We are fond of rest; we want to sleep. Your watchman has a very loud voice, and the coaches roll the whole night along the street so as to make all the windows rattle. We wake every quarter of an hour to curse them, and fall asleep again to be again awaked in another quarter of au hour. You must admit, my dear fellow, that this is enough to destroy our health and ex

The host shrugged his shoulders.-"How can it be helped?"

"if

"They may be spies," thought the host, "or runaways, or fools. No matter what is that to me? They pay honestly." When he was sitting in an evening over a pint of wine with his neighbour and relation, the grocer, they used to rack their brains about the mys-haust our patience." terious guests. "They are spies," said the grocer; one of them squints with his left eye." "A man may squint without being a spy," rejoined the host; "I should rather take them! for runaways, for they read all my newspapers, probably for the sake of the advertisements." Du Long, whose barren field had, since the His kinsman then assured him that all English-arrival of the Englishmen, been daily fertilized men spend at least a twelfth part of their lives with a shower of guineas, promised to do all in reading newspapers. The conclusion to which they generally came was, that as the said foreigners were apparently neither spics por runaways, they could not possibly be any

"Very easily," replied the stranger; you are not afraid of a little expence, in which we will go halves without requiring at our departure the smallest compensation."

* Many of these precepts were written to one of his sons on his recovery from a dangerous sickness.

that lay in his power to satisfy his worthy guests; but he could not prevent the rattling of the coaches and bellowing of the watchman. "Neither is it necessary," answered the stranger. "Behind your house you have a little garden, though you are no lover of gardening; for, except a little parsley for your soups, I observe nothing in it but nettles. The old garden-wall, too, in spite of its thickness, is just ready to tumble. Suppose you were to make use of this space to run up a little building, a sort of pleasure-house, even if it were to contain no more than a couple of rooms. It might be supported by the old wall, by which means a considerable part of the expence would be spared, and the wall itself would be propped up. As I just now mentioned, for the sake of a quiet lodging we would willingly defray one-half of the cost, and when we are gone the building will be yours. You will, then have an additional couple of convenient rooms to let. If, on the other hand, you object to our proposal, we must leave you."

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One fine day in autumn he saw them go out with their guns slung over their shoulders. They told him that they were going to take the diversion of suipe-shooting, and took leave of him for three days. The three days passed, and so did a fourth, but the strangers did not make their appearance. On the fifth, Du Long shook his head; on the sixth his kinsman began to shake his also; on the seventh this suspicious circumstance was communicated to the police; and on the eight the deserted habitation was broken open with all the formalities of law. On the table was found a billet, the contents of which were as follow:

"Dear landlord,-If you have any acquaintance with history, you must know that the English were once, during a period of two hundred and ten years, in possession of Calais; that they were at length driven out of it by the Duke of Guise, who treated them in the same mauner as our Edward III. did the French, that is, drove them out of the town and seized all their effects. Not long since we were so fortunate as to discover in a chest full of old parchments, deeds which proved that one of our ancestors formerly possessed at Calais a large house, ou the site of which three houses stand at present; yours is one of the three. When our ancestor was obliged to flee, he buried his gold and silver at the foot of a thick wall which is still in existence. Among his papers we found one which afford

The host, however, had not the least objection, though he thought within himself:"My kinsman and I were right enough in concluding that these people were fools." He immediately sent for a bricklayer: the place was examined, and the Englishmen described what they should like to have done. Joists and bricks were quickly brought; three light walls were quickly run up, the old gardened satisfactory information respecting the siwall formed the fourth, from which sloped a half roof; so that the whole looked more like a wood-house than a habitation: but the strangers were satisfied, and Du Long laughed in his sleeve.

Two months thus passed in mutual content; || the golden spring flowed abundantly though the wine grew worse and worse every day; the two Englishmen very seldom quitted their lodging, where they ate, drank, and read the newspapers. The only thing that surprized the landlord of the Golden Elephant was, that for the sake of nocturnal repose they had built a house for themselves, and that now he very often perceived a light the whole night through in their apartments. He once conjectured that they might be coiners; but as all the money they spent passed through his hands, and their guineas, after the most careful examination, were always found to be good, his kinsman and he had again no other alternative than to set them down for fools.

tuation of the building. We immediately repaired to Calais, and luckily found a public house on the spot so interesting to us; we took lodgings in it, examined every thing, aud concerted measures to take possession of our lawful inheritance without exciting notice. In what manner we removed all obstacles is well known to you. The great hole and the empty iron chest which you will find under the wall in our chamber, are proofs that we have been successful. We make you a present of the chest, and advise you to fill up the hole, and to give yourself no farther concern about us; all inquiries will be in vain, as the names we went by were only assumed. Farewel."

The landlord of the Golden Elephant stood stock still and with open mouth. His kinsman came; both looked at the hole and then at the empty chest, and then at one another, and agreed that the strangers were not such fools as they had taken them for.

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