ling!

XIV.

Divide your arts into two classes,--those which cost you little labour,
those which cost much. The first,--flattery, attention, answering
letters by return of post, walking across a street to oblige the man you
intend to ruin; all these you must never neglect. The least man is worth
gaining at a small cost. And besides, while you are serving yourself,
you are also obtaining the character of civility, diligence,
and good-nature. But the arts which cost you much labour--a long
subservience to one testy individual; aping the semblance of a virtue,
a quality, or a branch of learning which you do not possess, to a person
difficult to blind,--all these never begin except for great ends, worth
not only the loss of time, but the chance of detection. Great pains
for small gains is the maxim of the miser. The rogue should have more
_grandeur d'ame!_--[Greatness of soul].

XV.

Always forgive.

XVI.

If a man owe you a sum of money--pupils though you be of mine, you may
once in your lives be so silly as to lend--and you find it difficult
to get it back, appeal, not to his justice, but to his charity. The
components of justice flatter few men! Who likes to submit to an
inconvenience because he ought to do it,--without praise, without
even self--gratulation? But charity, my dear friends, tickles up human
ostentation deliciously. Charity implies superiority; and the feeling of
superiority is most grateful to social nature. Hence the commonness of
charity, in proportion to other virtues, all over the world; and hence
you will especially note that in proportion as people are haughty
and arrogant, will they laud almsgiving and encourage charitable
institutions.

XVII.

Your genteel rogues do not sufficiently observe the shrewdness of the
vulgar ones. The actual beggar takes advantage of every sore; but the
moral swindler is unpardonably dull as to the happiness of a physical
infirmity. To obtain a favour, neglect no method that may allure
compassion. I knew a worthy curate who obtained two livings by the
felicity of a hectic cough, and a younger brother who subsisted for ten
years on his family by virtue of a slow consumption.

XVIII.

When you want to possess yourself of a small sum, recollect that the
small sum be put i