Laugh not at your own wit and humour; leave that to the company.
When the conversation is flowing in a serious and useful channel, never interrupt it by an ill-timed jest. The stream is scattered, and cannot be again collected.
Discourse not in a whisper, or half voice, to your next neighbour. It is ill breeding, and, in some degree, a fraud; conversation-stock being, as one has well observed, a joint and common property.
In reflexions on absent people, go no farther than you would go if they were present. ‘I resolve,’ says bishop Beveridge, ‘never to speak of a man’s virtues to his face, nor of his faults behind his back;’ a golden rule! the observation of which would, at one stroke, banish flattery and defamation from the earth.
THE VICTIM OF MAGICAL DELUSION;
OR, INTERESTING MEMOIRS OF MIGUEL, DUKE DE CA*I*A.
UNFOLDING MANY CURIOUS UNKNOWN HISTORICAL FACTS.
Translated from the German of Tschink.
(Continued from [page 147].)