Respect and deference are perhaps justly
demandable of the obliged, and may be, with some reason at least, from
expectation, paid to the rich and liberal from the necessitous; but
that men should be allured by the glittering of wealth only to feed
the insolent pride of those who will not in return feed their
hunger--that the sordid niggard should find any sacrifices on the
altar of his vanity--seems to arise from a blinder idolatry, and a
more bigoted and senseless superstition, than any which the sharp eyes
of priests have discovered in the human mind.
All gentlemen, therefore, who are not raised above each other by
title, birth, rank in profession, age, or actual obligation, being to
be considered as equals, let us take some lessons for their behaviour
to each other in public from the following examples; in which we shall
discern as well what we are to elect as what we are to avoid. Authades
is so absolutely abandoned to his own humour that he never gives it up
on any occasion. If Seraphina herself, whose charms one would imagine
should infuse alacrity into the limbs of a cripple sooner than the
Bath waters, was to offer herself for his partner, he would answer he
never danced, even though the ladies lost their ball by it.
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