this little book took it into his head to prompt the numerous actors
upon the great theatre of life; and he sincerely believes that his only
motive was to do good. He cast about to find the method of writing
calculated to do the most general good. He wanted to whip vice and folly
out of the country; he thought of 'Hudibras' and 'McFingal,' and
pondered well whether he should attempt the masterly style of those
writings. He found this would not do, for, like most modern rhymers, he
is no poet, and he always makes bungling work at imitation.

"The Prompter thought of the grave diction of sober, moral writers, and
the pompous, flowing style of modern historians. Fame began now to prick
up his vanity to try an imitation of the great Dr. Robertson, Dr.
Johnson, and Mr. Gibbon, those giants of literature. He thought if he
could muster dollars enough to buy a style-mill, which those heroes of
science undoubtedly used to cut out sentences for their works, he should
succeed to a tittle. But then it occurred to him that when he had cut
and shaped his periods into exact squares, diamonds, pentagons,
parallelograms, and other mathematical figures, they might not contain
very clear, precise, definite ideas; one half of his readers would not
understand him. The style-mill, then, or, as some people contemptuously
call it, the word-mill, would not answer the Prompter's purpose of doing
as much good as possible by making men wiser and better.

"At length he determined to have nothing to do with a brilliant flow of
words, a pompous elegance of diction; for what has the world to do with
the sound of words? The Prompter's business is with the world at large,
and the mass of mankind are concerned only with common things. A dish of
high-seasoned turtle is rarely found; it sometimes occurs at a
gentleman's table, and then the chance is it produces a surfeit. But
good solid roast beef is a common dish for all men; it sits easy on the
stomach, it supports, it strengthens and invigorates. Vulgar sayings and
proverbs, so much despised by the literary epicures, the Chesterfields
of the age, are the roast beef of science. They contain the experience,
the wisdom, of nations and ages compressed into the compass of a
nutshell. To crack the shell and extract the contents to feed those who
have appetites is the aim of this little book."

The several essays are expansive of the familiar sayings or proverbs
which stand for their titles, as, "It will do f