for should you
enlarge on some virtue, which anyone present may notoriously want: or
should you condemn some vices which any of the company may be
particularly addicted to, they will he apt to think your reflections
pointed and personal, and you will be sure to give offence. This
consideration will naturally lead you, not to suppose things said in
general to be levelled at you.

61. Low-bred people, when they happen occasionally to be in good
company, imagine themselves to be the subject of every separate
conversation. If any part of the company whispers, it is about them; if
they laugh, it is at them; and if any thing is said, which they do not
comprehend, they immediately suppose it is meant of them.--This mistake
is admirably ridiculed in one of our celebrated comedies, "_I am sure_,
says Scrub, _they were talking of me, for they laughed consumedly_."

62. Now, a well-bred person never thinks himself disesteemed by the
company, or laughed at, unless their reflections are so gross, that he
cannot be supposed to mistake them, and his honour obliges him to resent
it in a proper manner; however, be assured, gentlemen never laugh at or
ridicule one another, unless they are in joke, or on a footing of the
greatest intimacy. If such a thing should happen once in an age, from
some pert coxcomb, or some flippant woman, it is better not to seem to
know it, than to make the least reply.

63. It is a piece of politeness not to interrupt a person in a story,
whether you have heard it before or not. Nay, if a well-bred man is
asked whether he has heard it, he will answer no, and let the person go
on, though he knows it already. Some are fond of telling a story,
because they think they tell it well; others pride themselves in being
the first teller of it, and others are pleased at being thought
entrusted with it. Now, all these persons you would disappoint by
answering yes; and, as I have told you before, as the greatest proof of
politeness is to make every body happy about you, I would never deprive
a person of any secret satisfaction of this sort, when I could gratify
by a minute's attention.

64. Be not ashamed of asking questions, if such questions lead to
information: always accompany them with some excuse, and you will never
be reckoned impertinent. But, abrupt questions, without some apology, by
all means avoid, as they imply design. There is a way of fishing for
facts, which, if done judiciously, will answer every purp