Let me
advise every reader to do what I intend doing for the future: to wit,
to refuse to receive any unpaid letter. You may be quite sure that by
so doing you will not lose any letter that is worth having. A class of
people, very closely analogous to that of the people who do not pay
their letters, is that of such as are constantly borrowing small sums
from their friends, which they never restore. If you should ever be
thrown into the society of such, your right course will be to take
care to have no money in your pocket. People are disagreeable who are
given to talking of the badness of their servants, the undutifulness
of their children, the smokiness of their chimneys, and the deficiency
of their digestive organs. And though, with a true and close friend,
it is a great relief, and a special tie, to have spoken out your heart
about your burdens and sorrows, it is expedient, in conversation with
ordinary acquaintances, to keep these to yourself.
It must be admitted, with great regret, that people who make a
considerable profession of religion have succeeded in making
themselves more thoroughly disagreeable than almost any other human
beings have ever made themselves. You will find people, who claim not
merely to be pious and Christian people, but to be very much more
pious and Christian than others, who are extremely uncharitable,
unamiable, repulsive, stupid, and narrow-minded, and intensely
opinionated and self-satisfied.
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