al character, may utterly blast all your prospects
of happiness both in this world and the next.

You will of course have the greater power of _selection_, if your
general acquaintance is pretty extensive. I acknowledge, that my opinion
is rather in favour of your forming an extensive acquaintance, provided
that you never suffer it to encroach upon your time, or to lead you into
any compromise of religious principle. Going to the University
constitutes a sort of entrance into the world, an introduction to manly
life; but this advantage is lost if you seclude yourself altogether from
society. In order, however, to acquire or to retain such an
acquaintance, your manners and general demeanour must be acceptable or
popular.

One of the first requisites, in order to be thus acceptable, is the
neglect, the forgetfulness of _self_--a readiness to put _self_ in the
back-ground. Any obtrusion of self, any appearance of self-love,
self-interest, self-conceit, or self-applause, tends to expose a man to
dislike, perhaps to contempt.

One way in which this disregard, this abandonment of self, must show
itself, is real unaffected humility. Most of the external forms and
modes of modern politeness, its bows and obeisances, its professions of
respect and service, its adulations, are nothing but an affectation of
such humility, and bear witness to its value when it exists in reality.
When it does so exist, and still is free from any servility of manner,
any unworthy compliances, nothing contributes more to make a man
acceptable and popular in society. It inflicts no unnecessary wounds on
any one's pride or self-love. And, you will observe, that it is the
temper and behaviour, inculcated by the general spirit and by the
particular precepts of religion, which bids us _in honour to prefer one
another_; and says, _in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better
than himself_.

Another requisite is, a willingness to please and to be pleased. Some
men seem to think it beneath them, and a mark of littleness of mind, to
wish or to try to please any body, and wrap themselves up in a cold
superciliousness. Others seem determined never to be pleased with any
thing or any person, but are always finding fault. They have no eye
for, no perception of, merits or beauties, either external or internal,
but are keen and quick-sighted in detecting blemishes, and eloquent in
exaggerating them[20:1]. If any person's good qualities, or any work of
art