when you are a great man, for with them it is become a fashion. Let
ruffians go their own way. Let gentlemen be your companions, and
never fail to show them that you can at least be their equal in
courteous demeanor. Always pay your washerwoman; be not ashamed to
acknowledge your father, and remember that the fonder you speak of
your mother, the more you will be beloved by strangers. Avoid
politicians, who are come to be great vagabonds, who drink bad
liquor and give their thoughts to base designs against the nation's
gold. If you become great and valorous, historians will no doubt
defame you, and lay crimes of which you were innocent at your door,
as is common with them. But you must bear what they say of you with
Christian fortitude, remembering, always, that it is a delight with
them to tear greatness from its high throne." The parson looked
wisely in my face as he said this, and shook his head warningly.
"Most of all," he continued, "never permit yourself to fall into the
hands of treasury swindlers, money changers, and malicious editors,
who will set you up as the only fit person to be President of these
United States, though you have not a single qualification necessary
to the office. For they, being tricky men, will be sure to let you
down with the same facility they took you up; and when your
ancestors, down to the third and fourth generations are dug up, (as
it has become necessary to do,) and their character, together with
your own, made blacker than the ink they seek to damage one
another's character with, they will be the first to declare they
were mistaken in you-that you were not the man they took you for."

The parson said many other things of a like character, out which I
did not think worth writing down in my memory. He then shook hands
with my mother and father, expressed his surprise at the lateness of
the hour to the doctor, and took his leave, meeting with a strange