of other men. Such people are valetudinarians in society, and they
should no more come into company than a sick man should come into the
air.

4. If a man is too weak to bear what is a refreshment to men in health,
he must still keep his chamber. When any one in Sir _Roger_'s company
complains he is out of order, he immediately calls for some posset drink
for him; for which reason that sort of people, who are ever bewailing
their constitutions in other places, are the cheerfulest imaginable when
he is present.

5. It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd,
shall entertain those with whom they converse, by giving them the
history of their pains and aches; and imagine such narrations their
quota of the conversation. This is, of all others, the-meanest help to
discourse, and a man must not think at all, or think himself very
insignificant, when he finds an account of his head ache answered by
another asking, what news in the last mail?

6. Mutual good humour is a dress we ought to appear in wherever we meet,
and we should make no mention of what concerns ourselves, without it be
of matters wherein our friends ought to rejoice: but indeed there are
crowds of people who put themselves in no method of pleasing themselves
or others; such are those whom we usually call indolent persons.

7. Indolence is, methinks, an intermediate state between pleasure and
pain, and very much unbecoming any part of our life after we are out of
the nurse's arms. Such an aversion to labour creates a constant
weariness, and one would think should make existence itself a burden.