Great pains for small gains is the maxim of the miser. The rogue should have more grandeur d'ame! --[Greatness of soul].
XV.
Always forgive.
XVI.
If a man owe you a sum of money--pupils though you be of mine, you may once in your lives be so silly as to lend--and you find it difficult to get it back, appeal, not to his justice, but to his charity. The components of justice flatter few men! Who likes to submit to an inconvenience because he ought to do it,--without praise, without even self--gratulation? But charity, my dear friends, tickles up human ostentation deliciously. Charity implies superiority; and the feeling of superiority is most grateful to social nature. Hence the commonness of charity, in proportion to other virtues, all over the world; and hence you will especially note that in proportion as people are haughty and arrogant, will they laud almsgiving and encourage charitable institutions.
XVII.
Your genteel rogues do not sufficiently observe the shrewdness of the vulgar ones. The actual beggar takes advantage of every sore; but the moral swindler is unpardonably dull as to the happiness of a physical infirmity. To obtain a favour, neglect no method that may allure compassion. I knew a worthy curate who obtained two livings by the felicity of a hectic cough, and a younger brother who subsisted for ten years on his family by virtue of a slow consumption.
XVIII.
When you want to possess yourself of a small sum, recollect that the small sum be put into juxtaposition with a great. I do not express myself clearly--take an example. In London there are sharpers who advertise L70,000 to be advanced at four per cent; principals only conferred with. The gentleman wishing for such a sum on mortgage goes to see the advertiser; the advertiser says he must run down and look at the property on which the money is to be advanced; his journey and expenses will cost him a mere trifle,--say, twenty guineas. Let him speak confidently; let the gentleman very much want the money at the interest stated, and three to one but our sharper gets the twenty guineas,--so paltry a sum in comparison to L70,000 though so serious a sum had the matter related to halfpence!
XIX.
Lord Coke has said: "To trace an error to its fountainhead is to refute it." Now, my young pupils, I take it for granted that you are interested in the preservation of error; you do not wish it, therefore, to be traced to its fountain head. Whenever, then, you see a sharp fellow tracking it up, you have two ways of settling the matter. You may say, with a smile, "Nay, now, sir, you grow speculative,--I admire your ingenuity;" or else look grave, colour up, and say, "I fancy, sir, there is no warrant for this assertion in the most sacred of all authorities!" The Devil can quote Scripture, you know; and a very sensible Devil it is too!
XX.
Rochefoucauld has said: "The hate of favourites is nothing else but the love of favour." The idea is a little cramped; the hate we bear to any man is only the result of our love for some good which we imagine he possesses, or which, being in our possession, we imagine he has attacked. Thus envy, the most ordinary species of hate, arises from our value for the glory, or the plate, or the content we behold; and revenge is born from our regard for our fame that has been wounded, or our acres molested, or our rights invaded. But the most noisy of all hatreds is hatred for the rich, from love for the riches. Look well on the poor devil who is always railing at coaches and four! Book him as a man to be bribed!
XXI.
My beloved pupils, few have yet sufficiently studied the art by which the practice of jokes becomes subservient to the science of swindlers. The heart of an inferior is always fascinated by a jest.