Don Quixote writes to your
worship deserves to be printed or written in letters of gold, and it
is as follows."

DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA'S LETTER TO SANCHA PANZA, GOVERNOR OF THE
ISLAND OF BARATARIA

"When I was expecting to hear of thy stupidities and blunders, friend
Sancho, I have received intelligence of thy displays of good sense;
for which I give special thanks to Heaven, that can raise the poor
from the dunghill and of fools to make wise men. They tell me thou
dost govern as if thou wert a man, and art a man as if thou wert a
beast, so great is the humility wherewith thou dost comport thyself.
But I would have thee bear in mind, Sancho, that very often it is
fitting and necessary for the authority of office to resist the
humility of the heart; for the seemly array of one who is invested
with grave duties should be such as they require, and not measured by
what his own humble tastes may lead him to prefer. Dress well; a stick
dressed up does not look like a stick: I do not say thou shouldst wear
trinkets or fine raiment, or that being a judge thou shouldst dress
like a soldier, but that thou shouldst array thyself in the apparel
thy office requires, and that at the same time it be neat and
handsome. To win the good-will of the people thou governest, there are
two things among others that thou must do: one is to be civil to all
(this however I told thee before), and the other to take care that
food be abundant; for there is nothing that vexes the heart of the
poor more than hunger and high prices. Make not many proclamations;
but those thou makest take care that they be good ones, and above all
that they be observed and carried out: for proclamations that are not
observed are the same as if they did not exist; nay, they encourage
the idea that the prince who had the wisdom and authority to make them
had not the power to enforce them; and laws that threaten and are not
enforced come to be like the log, the king of the frogs, that
frightened them at first, but that in time they despised and mounted
upon. Be a father to virtue and a stepfather to vice. Be not always
strict, nor yet always lenient, but observe a mean between these two
extremes, for in that is the aim of wisdom. Visit the jails, the
slaughter-houses, and the market-places; for the presence of the
governor is of great importance in such places: it comforts the
prisoners who are in hopes of a speedy release; it is the bugbear of
the butchers, wh