To suffer none live idlelie
For feare of idle knaverie.
To answere stranger ciuilie,
But show him not thy secresie.
To vse no friend deceitfully,
To offer no man villeny.
To learne how foe to pacifie,
But trust him not too trustilie.
To meddle not with vsurie
Nor lend thy monie foolishlie.
To loue thy neighbor neighborly
And shew him no discurtesy.
To learne to eschew ill company
And such as liue dishonestlie."
Though quaintly put—and their quaintness is accentuated by spelling such as would not at all pass muster in these iron-bound days of examinations for high and low, rich and poor—these halting couplets contain a full modicum of excellent common-sense.
It is not really the man whose possessions are few who is poor as he whose desires are great, and it has been well said that if we help some one who is worse off than ourselves we soon realise that we are more affluent than we thought. The helping to bear another's burden does not add to our own, but lightens it.
The French say, "Vent au visage rend un homme sage," a proverb fairly paralleled in an English adage, "Adversity makes a man wise, not rich." A quaint and serviceable proverb, quoted by Ray and others, though it has now passed quite out of use, is the assertion that "A bad bush is better than the open field," whether in sultry sunshine, piercing gale, or heavy downpour. It is better to have some friends, even though they can do little or nothing for us, than to be thrown quite destitute on a pitiless world; and it is wiser to make the best of what is than to scorn the small amount of help that it is able to give.