by a person who little thought that it would ever fall into my hands: and
indeed it was by the greatest accident in the world that it did.




LETTER XVI

LONDON, October 9, O. S. 1747.

DEAR BOY: People of your age have, commonly, an unguarded frankness about
them; which makes them the easy prey and bubbles of the artful and the
experienced; they look upon every knave or fool, who tells them that he
is their friend, to be really so; and pay that profession of simulated
friendship, with an indiscreet and unbounded confidence, always to their
loss, often to their ruin. Beware, therefore, now that you are coming
into the world, of these preferred friendships. Receive them with great
civility, but with great incredulity too; and pay them with compliments,
but not with confidence. Do not let your vanity and self-love make you
suppose that people become your friends at first sight, or even upon a
short acquaintance. Real friendship is a slow grower and never thrives
unless engrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit. There is
another kind of nominal friendship among young people, which is warm for
the time, but by good luck, of short duration. This friendship is hastily
produced, by their being accidentally thrown together, and pursuing the
course of riot and debauchery. A fine friendship, truly; and well
cemented by drunkenness and lewdness. It should rather be called a
conspiracy against morals and good manners, and be punished as such by
the civil magistrate. However, they have the impudence and folly to call
this confederacy a friendship. They lend one another money, for bad