It is perhaps unjust to accuse the man, always
overflowing in geniality upon everybody he meets, of being an impostor
or humbug. Perhaps he does feel an irrepressible gush of love to all
his race: but why convey to each individual of the race that he loves
_him_ more than all the others?
Yet it is to be admitted that it is always well that a man should be
agreeable. Pleasantness is always a pleasing thing. And a sensible
man, seeking by honest means to make himself agreeable, will generally
succeed in making himself agreeable to sensible men. But although
there is an implied compliment, to your power, if not to your
personality, in the fact of a man's taking pains to make himself
agreeable to you, it is certain that he may try to make himself so by
means of which the upshot will be to make him intensely
disagreeable. You know the fawning, sneaking manner which an
occasional shopkeeper adopts. It is most disagreeable to
right-thinking people. Let him remember that he is also a man; and
let his manner be manly as well as civil. It is an awful and
humiliating sight, a man who is always squeezing himself together like
a whipped dog, whenever you speak to him,--grinning and bowing, and
(in a moral sense) wriggling about before you on the earth, and
begging you to wipe your feet on his head.
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