east seeming attention), if he is worth obliging; for
nothing will oblige him more than a patient hearing, as nothing would
hurt him more than either to leave him in the midst of his discourse, or
to discover your impatience under your affliction.

Take, rather than give, the tone of the company you are in. If you have
parts, you will show them, more or less, upon every subject; and if you
have not, you had better talk sillily upon a subject of other people's
than of your own choosing.

Avoid as much as you can, in mixed companies, argumentative, polemical
conversations; which, though they should not, yet certainly do, indispose
for a time the contending parties toward each other; and, if the
controversy grows warm and noisy, endeavor to put an end to it by some
genteel levity or joke. I quieted such a conversation-hubbub once, by
representing to them that, though I was persuaded none there present
would repeat, out of company, what passed in it, yet I could not answer
for the discretion of the passengers in the street, who must necessarily
hear all that was said.

Above all things, and upon all occasions, avoid speaking of yourself, if
it be possible. Such is the natural pride and vanity of our hearts, that
it perpetually breaks out, even in people of the best parts, in all the
various modes and figures of the egotism.

Some, abruptly, speak advantageously of themselves, without either
pretense or provocation. They are impudent. Others proceed more artfully,
as they imagine; and forge accusations against themselves, complain of
calumnies which they never heard, in order to justify themselves, by
exhibiting a catalogue of their many virtues. They acknowledge it may,
indeed, seem odd that they should talk in that manner of themselves; it
is what they do not like, and what they never would have done; no; no
tortures should ever have forced it from them, if they had, not been thus
unjustly and monstrously accused. But, in these cases; justice is surely
due to one's self, as well as to others; and when our character is
attacked, we may say in our own justification, what otherwise we never
would have said. This thin veil of Modesty drawn before Vanity, is much
too transparent to conceal it, even from very moderate discernment.

Others go more modestly and more slyly still (as they think) to work; but
in my mind still more ridiculously. They confess themselves (not without
some degree of shame and confusion) into all the