BATH,October 29,O.S.1748.
DEAR BOY:My anxiety for your success increases in proportion as the time approaches of your taking your part upon the great stage of the world.
The audience will form their opinion of you upon your first appearance (making the proper allowance for your inexperience),and so far it will be final,that,though it may vary as to the degrees,it will never totally change.This consideration excites that restless attention with which I am constantly examining how I can best contribute to the perfection of that character,in which the least spot or blemish would give me more real concern,than I am now capable of feeling upon any other account whatsoever.
I have long since done mentioning your great religious and moral duties,because I could not make your understanding so bad a compliment as to suppose that you wanted,or could receive,any new instructions upon those two important points.Mr.Harte,I am sure,has not neglected them;and,besides,they are so obvious to common sense and reason,that commentators may (as they often do)perplex,but cannot make them clearer.My province,therefore,is to supply by my experience your hitherto inevitable inexperience in the ways of the world.People at your age are in a state of natural ebriety;and want rails,and 'gardefous',wherever they go,to hinder them from breaking their necks.
This drunkenness of youth is not only tolerated,but even pleases,if kept within certain bounds of discretion and decency.These bounds are the point which it is difficult for the drunken man himself to find out;and there it is that the experience of a friend may not only serve,but save him.
Carry with you,and welcome,into company all the gaiety and spirits,but as little of the giddiness,of youth as you can.The former will charm;but the latter will often,though innocently,implacably offend.Inform yourself of the characters and situations of the company,before you give way to what your imagination may prompt you to say.There are,in all companies,more wrong beads than right ones,and many more who deserve,than who like censure.Should you therefore expatiate in the praise of some virtue,which some in company notoriously want;or declaim against any vice,which others are notoriously infected with,your reflections,however general and unapplied,will,by being applicable,be thought personal and leveled at those people.This consideration points out to you,sufficiently,not to be suspicious and captious yourself,nor to suppose that things,because they may be,are therefore meant at you.
The manners of well-bred people secure one from those indirect and mean attacks;but if,by chance,a flippant woman or a pert coxcomb lets off anything of that kind,it is much better not to seem to understand,than to reply to it.
Cautiously avoid talking of either your own or other people's domestic affairs.Yours are nothing to them but tedious;theirs are nothing to you.The subject is a tender one:and it is odds but that you touch somebody or other's sore place:for,in this case,there is no trusting to specious appearances;which may be,and often are,so contrary to the real situations of things,between men and their wives,parents and their children,seeming friends,etc.,that,with the best intentions in the world,one often blunders disagreeably.
Remember that the wit,humor,and jokes,of most mixed companies are local.They thrive in that particular soil,but will not often bear transplanting.Every company is differently circumstanced,has its particular cant and jargon;which may give occasion to wit and mirth within that circle,but would seem flat and insipid in any other,and therefore will not bear repeating.Nothing makes a man look sillier than a pleasantry not relished or not understood;and if he meets with a profound silence when he expected a general applause,or,what is worse,if he is desired to explain the bon mot,his awkward and embarrassed situation is easier imagined'than described.'A propos'of repeating;take great care never to repeat (I do not mean here the pleasantries)in one company what you hear in another.Things,seemingly indifferent,may,by circulation,have much graver consequences than you would imagine.Besides,there is a general tacit trust in conversation,by which a man is obliged not to report anything out of it,though he is not immediately enjoined to secrecy.A retailer of this kind is sure to draw himself into a thousand scrapes and discussions,and to be shyly and uncomfortably received wherever he goes.