Stop and draw a line likewise, at the abstraction that finds its hand in your pocket, or creeps in at your bedroom window, or is blandly oblivious as to whether it owes you money, or vice versa.
Stop, and turn the question over in your mind: True enough, there is a chance of such eccentricities being the concomitants of a certain sort of talent, but is it exactly the sort that ought to be encouraged?
Stop, if naturally dishonest or vicious yourself, and inquire if you can fairly judge others according to your own corrupt standard. This may prevent your giving yourself away, besides leavening your collective baseness with a grain or two of charity.
Stop, however, if honest and well-meaning—and, indeed, it is mainly for such that this symposium of golden precepts is prepared—and remember, as a stimulant to careful discrimination in these things, that your own superficialities may be constantly and cruelly misjudged.
Stop short of supposing that you have no superficialities, or but few, to be judged by. The visibility of existence is largely made up of them; it is, perhaps even well that the heart is not often worn upon the sleeve; and equally well that our externals are but deceptive indices of the springs of action, the blots and foibles they disguise, else were the wisest of us each other’s sport.
Stop before taking mildness and retirement of manner for a want of resolution or courage. True greatness in anything is seldom self-celebrating, and it is as true as proverbial that “still waters run deep.”
Stop, on the other hand, before setting down a strutting self-importance as invariably betokening a wind-bag or a nincompoop. Modesty is, unfortunately, not always the hand-maid of merit.
Stop before mistaking ostentation for generosity, or calm acceptance for ingratitude. “As the mean have a calculating avarice that sometimes inclines them to give, so the magnanimous have a condescending generosity that sometimes inclines them to receive.”
Stop before despising in another the demonstrativeness that you would despise in yourself. The babble of the brook is as natural as the stillness of the pool and temperamental differences are always to be considered.
Stop before regarding extreme particularity in dress as an invariable evidence of intellectual insignificance. It often is so, but nine-tenths of the shabbily-attired men of brains would dress better if they could afford to.