After one such compliment, it would be almost the same as ask you for another, if I shall make apology in case I have not find the correct idiotism of your language in this letter; so I shall not make none at all--only throw myself at your mercy, like a great critic.
P. S. Ha! ha! It is very droll! I tell my valet, we go at Leicestershire for the hunting fox. Very well. So soon as I finish this letter, he come and demand what I shall leave behind in orders for some presents, to give what people will come at my lodgments for Christmas _Boxes_.--_Blackwood's Magazine._
TO attempt to borrow money on the plea of extreme poverty.--To lose money at play, and then fly into a passion about it.--To ask the publisher of a new periodical how many copies he sells per week.--To ask a wine merchant how old his wine is.--To make yourself generally disagreeable, and wonder that nobody will visit you, unless they gain some palpable advantage by it.--To get drunk, and complain the next morning of a headache.--To spend your earnings on liquor, and wonder that you are ragged.--To sit shivering in the cold because you won't have a fire till November.--To suppose that reviewers generally read more than the title-page of the works they praise or condemn.--To judge of people's piety by their attendance at church.--To keep your clerks on miserable salaries, and wonder at their robbing you.--Not to go to bed when you are tired and sleepy, because "it is not bed time."--To make your servants tell lies for you, and afterwards be angry because they tell lies for themselves.--To tell your own secrets, and believe other people will keep them.--To render a man a service voluntarily, and expect him to be grateful for it.--To expect to make people honest by hardening them in a jail, and afterwards sending them adrift without the means of getting work.--To fancy a thing is cheap because a low price is asked for it.--To say that a man is charitable because he subscribes to an hospital.--To keep a dog or a cat on short allowance, and complain of its being a thief.--To degrade human nature in the hope of improving it.--To praise the beauty of a woman's hair before you know whether it did not once belong to somebody else.--To expect that your tradespeople will give you long credit if they generally see you in shabby clothes.--To arrive at the age of fifty, and be surprised at any vice, folly, or absurdity your fellow creatures may be guilty of.
