n the world a number of rich
merchants, nobility, States, and princes who have need of honest
instruments for the management of their affairs, and such being so
rare) have endeavored to convince young persons that no qualities were
so likely to make a poor man's fortune as those of probity and
integrity.

My list of virtues contained at first but twelve: but a Quaker friend
having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my
pride showed itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content
with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing
and rather insolent, of which he convinced me by mentioning several
instances;--I determined endeavoring to cure myself, if I could, of
this vice or folly among the rest, and I added _Humility_ to my list,
giving an extensive meaning to the word.

I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the _reality_ of this
virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the _appearance_ of it.
I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments
of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself,
agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or
expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such as
_certainly_, _undoubtedly_, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, _I
conceive_, _I apprehend_, or _I imagine_ a thing to be so or so; or it
_so appears to me at present_. When another asserted something that I
thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him
abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his
proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain
cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present
case there _appeared_ or _seemed_ to me some difference, etc. I soon
found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I
engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed
my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction;
I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I
more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join
with me when I happened to be in the right.

And this mode, which I at first put on with some violence to natural
inclination, became at length so easy and so habitual to me, that
perhaps for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical
expression escape me. And to this habit (after my character of
integrity)