use I am sure you do not want them; but for
alteratives you must expect a great many; and I can tell you that I have
a number of NOSTRUMS, which I shall communicate to nobody but yourself.
To speak without a metaphor, I shall endeavor to assist your youth with
all the experience that I have purchased, at the price of seven and fifty
years. In order to this, frequent reproofs, corrections, and admonitions
will be necessary; but then, I promise you, that they shall be in a
gentle, friendly, and secret manner; they shall not put you out of
countenance in company, nor out of humor when we are alone. I do not
expect that, at nineteen, you should have that knowledge of the world,
those manners, that dexterity, which few people have at nine-and-twenty.
But I will endeavor to give them you; and I am sure you will endeavor to
learn them, as far as your youth, my experience, and the time we shall
pass together, will allow. You may have many inaccuracies (and to be sure
you have, for who has not at your age?) which few people will tell you
of, and some nobody can tell you of but myself. You may possibly have
others, too, which eyes less interested, and less vigilant than mine, do
not discover; all those you shall hear of from one whose tenderness for
you will excite his curiosity and sharpen his penetration. The smallest
inattention or error in manners, the minutest inelegance of diction, the
least awkwardness in your dress and carriage, will not escape my
observation, nor pass without amicable correction. Two, the most intimate
friends in the world, can freely tell each other their faults, and even
their crimes, but cannot possibly tell each other of certain little
weaknesses; awkwardnesses, and blindnesses of self-love; to authorize
that unreserved freedom, the relation between us is absolutely necessary.
For example, I had a very worthy friend, with whom I was intimate enough
to tell him his faults; he had but few; I told him of them; he took it
kindly of me, and corrected them. But then, he had some weaknesses that I
could never tell him of directly, and which he was so little sensible of
himself, that hints of them were lost upon him. He had a scrag neck, of
about a yard long; notwithstanding which, bags being in fashion, truly he
would wear one to his wig, and did so; but never behind him, for, upon
every motion of his head, his bag came forward over one shoulder or the
other. He took it into his head too, that he must occasion