Address and Behaviour before Parents.
Sect. 1. When a gentleman or lady pays you a visit, run out, the more slovenly the better; it will shew your attention to business, and a due sense of the honour they do you. It would be proper also that your wife hold the door open; your ushers be all ready to bow as they pass; and that your best looking boys be called into the parlour.
Sect. 2. If a parent unfortunately call to see a boy who has been just whipped, call the boy to you, and threaten, if he promises not to behave better, to tell his parents; then carry him into the parlour, pat him upon the head; tell them how prettily he reads, that he is sometimes in fault—but you never tell, and he will do so no more.
Sect. 3. If a fond mother come too often to see a favourite child, never fail to tell her, how the child cries when she is gone.
Sect. 4. Write always to ministers of state, and your brethren of the Birch, in Latin or Greek, and the more blunders the better; the former will take them for elegances which they have forgot; and the latter which they never knew.
Sect. 5. Never ask the parents or friends of the boys to dine with you. You live upon the fragments left by the boys, and have nothing worth asking them to; it will be a proof of your frugality, and they will the more readily pay your demands.
CHAP. VIII.
Academy Wives.
Sect. 1. The properest person is a daughter or widow of the trade, such a one is commonly best instructed in the mystery of the business, best able to conciliate the affection of the boys, and make most of the children's linen.