but do not let them occur unless they _really are_ unavoidable in
fairness and reason. If you have yourself made an appointment, your word
is, to a certain degree, pledged to your keeping to it. The case is in
some measure the same, when, though the appointment is actually made by
others, you have acceded to it.

Want of punctuality seems to proceed either from pride and
superciliousness, or from some infirmity, some weakness of character.
Most men try to be punctual in any appointment with a man of rank
superior to themselves, especially if they have any object, any
interest, in conciliating his favour. And, on the other hand, too many
persons seem to feel themselves at liberty to be unpunctual in an
appointment with an inferior. It is not worth while, they think, to care
about being exact with one so much beneath them. "Let him wait till I am
at leisure to attend to him," exclaims such a man, in the proud
consciousness of superiority; and, perhaps, some trifle, or mere
indolence, is all that he has to plead for his neglect.

You, my dear nephew, have, I trust, long since learned, that you have no
right to treat any man, however low his rank may be, with
disrespect,--with any thing approaching to contempt. You well know, that
both reason and religion require us to regard all men as our brothers,
and that one of the golden rules of the latter is, _in lowliness of
mind, let each esteem others better than himself_. Whatever a man's rank
in life may be, he has a right to punctuality as he has a right to
truth; and you have no right, by your unpunctuality, to rob him either
of his time or his patience. Certainly you have no right to give him by
such means the painful feeling that he is neglected, and neglected
because he is despised.

And thus, also, with men of your own age and your own rank in life; in
all the little engagements and appointments, whether of business or of
pleasure, which occur in the common intercourse of society, endeavour
still to maintain the habit of punctuality. As every man wishes to have
the character of being true to his word, so it will be to your credit to
have the character of being true to your engagements, whether those
engagements relate to great matters or to small.

But though want of punctuality is sometimes occasioned by pride, it
must more frequently proceed from a certain degree of weakness of
character, or from mere indolence. A man acknowledges punctuality to be
right and desira