small sums, should you lose your money pray lose it with temper: or
win, receive your winnings without either elation or greediness.

8. To write well and correct, and in a pleasing style, is another part
of polite education. Every man who has the use of his eyes and his right
hand, can write whatever hand he pleases. Nothing is so illiberal as a
school-boy's scrawl. I would not have you learn a stiff formal
hand-writing, like that of a school-master, but a genteel, legible, and
liberal hand, and to be able to write quick. As to the correctness and
elegancy of your writing, attention to grammar does the one, and to the
best authors, the other. Epistolary correspondence should not be carried
on in a studied or affected style, but the language should flow from the
pen, as naturally and as easily as it would from the mouth. In short, a
letter should be penned in the same style as you would talk to your
friend, if he was present.

9. If writing well shews the gentleman, much more so does spelling well.
It is so essentially necessary for a gentleman, or a man of letters,
that one false spelling may fix a ridicule on him for the remainder of
his life. Words in books are generally well spelled, according to the
orthography of the age; reading, therefore, with attention, will teach
every one to spell right. It sometimes happens, that words shall be
spelled differently by different authors; but, if you spell them upon
the authority of one in estimation of the public, you will escape
ridicule. Where there is but one way of spelling a word, by your
spelling it wrong, you will be sure to be laughed at. For a _woman_ of a
tolerable education would laugh at and despise her lover, if he wrote to
her, and the words were ill-spelled. Be particularly attentive, then, to
your spelling.

10. There is nothing that a man at his first appearance in life ought
more to dread than having any ridicule fixed on him. In the estimation
even of the most rational men, it will not only lessen him, but ruin him
with all the rest. Many a man has been undone by a ridiculous nick-name.
The causes of nick-names among well-bred men, are generally the little
defects in manner, air, or address. To have the appellation of ill-bred,
aukward, muttering, left-legged, or any other tacked always to your
name, would injure you more than you are aware of; avoid then these
little defects (and they are easily avoided) and you need never fear a
nick-name.

11. Some