the human species,
one of the most contemptible. In proportion to a person's activity for
his own good and that of his fellow creatures, he is to be regarded as
a more or less valuable member of society. If all the idle people in
the United States were to be buried in one year, the loss would be
trifling in comparison with the loss of only a _very few_ industrious
people. Each moment of time ought to be put to proper use, either in
business, in improving the mind, in the innocent and necessary
relaxations and entertainments of life, or in the care of the moral and
religious part of our nature. Each moment of time is, in the language
of theology, a monument of Divine mercy.

SECTION V. _Proper Time of Doing Business._

There are times and seasons for every lawful purpose of life, and a
very material part of prudence is to judge rightly, and make the best
of them. If you have to deal, for example, with a phlegmatic gloomy
man, take him, if you can, over his bottle. This advice may seem, at
first view, to give countenance to a species of fraud: but is it so?
These hypochondriacal people have their fits and starts, and if you do
not take them when they are in an agreeable state of mind, you are very
likely to find them quite as much below par, as the bottle raises them
above. But if you deal with them in this condition, they are no more
_themselves_ than in the former case. I therefore think the advice
correct. It is on the same principles, and in the same belief, that I
would advise you, when you deal with a covetous man, to propose your
business to him immediately after he has been receiving, rather than
expending money. So if you have to do with a drunkard, call on him in
the morning; for then, if ever, his head is clear.

Again; if you know a person to be unhappy in his family, meet him
abroad if possible, rather than at his own house. A statesman will not
be likely to give you a favorable reception immediately after being
disappointed in some of his schemes. Some people are always sour and
ill humored from the hour of rising till they have dined.

And as in persons, so in things, the _time_ is a matter of great
consequence; an eye to the rise and fall of goods; the favorable season
of importing and exporting;--these are some of the things which require
the attention of those who expect any considerable share of success.

It is not certain but some dishonest person, under shelter of the rule,
in this chapter, ma