neither will creditors insult thee, nor want oppress, nor hunger bite, nor nakedness freeze thee. The whole hem isphere will shine brighter, and pleasure spring up in ev ery corner of thy heart. Now, therefore, embrace these rules and be happy. Banish the bleak winds of sorrow from thy mind, and live independent. Then shalt thou be a man, and not hide thy face at the approach of the rich, nor suffer the pain of feeling little when the sons of fortune walk at thy right hand: for independency, whether with little or much is good fortune, and placeth thee on even ground with the proudest of the golden fleece. Oh then, be wise, and let industry walk with thee in the morning, and attend thee until thou reachest the evening hour for rest. Let honesty be as the breath of thy soul, and never forget to have a penny when all thy expences are enumerated and paid; then shalt thou reach the summit of happiness, and independence shall be thy shield and buckler, thy helmet and crown; then shall thy soul walk upright, nor stoop to the silken wretch because he hath riches, nor pocket an abuse because the hand which offers it, wears a ring set with diamonds. DR. FRANKLIN. MR. EDITOR, Obadiah Olive's Complaint. I am one of those unfortunate tradesmen who are plagued with a reading wife, who, according to my no tion, is a very great evil in a house. My wife does hardly any one earthly thing, but read, read, read, almost from the time that she gets up, to the time that she goes to bed. Howsomever, I should not value her reading so much neither; though, to be sure, as she is a bookish woman, she is of very little service to me in my business, did she not very often oblige me to hear her, when I had Inuch rather be looking over my own books; which, by the way, I would not charge, no, that I would not, for all hers, notwithstanding she makes such a confounded route about them, so that my ears and my head are disturbed at the same time. For my part, I read only the papers in order to see how the nation goes on; and what chance there is for pushing business. But the worst of the affair is to come. My wife has lately been very fond of a book full of hard words; and will persist in reading out of it to me when ever she can catch me at leisure. Now, to tell you the truth, I don't take in one word in ten which comes out of her mouth; and there is no pleasure, you know, in hearing what you can make neither head nor tail of. I am often forced to say to her," I can't for the soul of me, tell what the author would be at; he is a confounded puzzling fellow, I am sure." We had a terrible brush t'other day, Sir: upon her coming out with a plagued hard word, I said to her, "lookee here, Mrs. Olive, it don't signify three farthings, I can't bear no longer, to sit and hear what I don't understand. I should be glad to know," says I, " what language you are reading " "Why English, to be sure," says she, looking fiercely at me as if she would eat me. "The dogs a bit," says I: "such English as that there you have been reading, I never heard in all my born days." The answer, though I spake it as cool as a cucumber, put her into a violent passion-her eyes struck fire, and she coloured like a turkey-cock at the sight of a red handkerchief. After she had clapt down her book on the table in such a manner, that I thought verily she had made work for the joiner, she said, "your want of erudition is insupportable-I pity from my heart the paucity of your ideas; you are the lowest of terrestrial beings, and it shocks me to death to find you so incapable of relishing the compositions of a man, who for the universality of his genius, the vivacious ebullitions of his fancy, and the exuberance of his imagination; for the diversity of his matter, the subtilty of his reasoning, and the melody of his diction, is incontrovertibly one of the brightest lumina ries in the literary world." Luckily, to my no small satisfaction, I was just then called down stairs to receive orders from one of my best country customers, by which means, I was not under a necessity at that time of making an answer to a speech which was indeed quite out of my spere: and as soon as I had done that job, I went and bought Johnson's Dictionary, that I might be able to understand my wife a little better; but, to my great mortification, I have thrown away my money; for, when I look for the meaning of one of Mrs. Olive's crank words, I am often as much, if not more, puzzled than I was afore. My wrongheaded wife, not contented with talking herself not to be understood by such a plain man as I am, brings up her daughter to have a taste for the same kind of language, which, I am sure, is not fit for common use. According to my notion now, neither tradesmen, nor tradesmen's wives, nor any body belonging to them, have any business to talk like skolards. But I was going to tell you about my daughter. Why, Polly, Sir, is a clever girl enough, I must own, and old enough, (for she will be nineteen in about ten days) to know better than to follow her foolish mother in what only makes her be laughed at by all her acquaintance behind her back. Polly has already lost a good match, a very good match, by her nonsensical behaviour; and if she takes after her mother, will never get a husband worth hanging. "A storekeeper in the neighbourhood, an industrious young fellow, courted her, and I do verily believe would have married her in a little while; but she found so much fault one day when he came to make her a present of some ribbons, with his phraseology and pronunciation, telling him that he had a barbarous assemblage of expressions, and delivered them with a horrid incorrectness, that he took up his hat, not caring, I suppose, to be treated like a schoolboy, for which, I confess, I can't blame him, and has never darkened my door since. I hope all unmarried tradesmen, when they have read this letter, (for your Magazine will undoubtedly fall into the hands of many such people) will take special care how they venture on a bookish woman. For my part, I am sick of all books, but those belonging to my shop. Freemasons Magazine. Beauty destroyed by Affectation. The brightest forms through Affectation fade What you, who labour at perfection mean : YOUNG. The graces, all three sisters, all extremely pretty ladies, and maids of honour to the goddess Venus, the allpowerful queen of love lived together, for a long time, in the strictest bonds of affection and friendship one towards another, which is somewhat extraordinary, indeed as they were such near relations, such uncommon beauties, and such distinguished favourites at court. In process of time, however, pride and ambition sowed the seeds of jealousy among them. Each began to plume herself on her own imaginary charms; and each insisted on her precedence, as having the most fire in her eyes, the most resistless arts of pleasing in conversation, and the surest and most enchanting ways of making captives of her beholders. The contest, in short, grew so warm, that they entertained thoughts of making their appeal to their mistress Venus, on so important & critical an affair. "For my part," said Miss Euphrosyne, with a smile of indifference and disdain, "I desire no better judge, since no one will be more impartial; and we are all sensible that no one can possibly be better qualified to settle and adjust the merit and prize of beauty. Let us lay, my dear sisters, all animosities aside, and at once, without more ado, agree to refer our cause to her decision. Let her declare which of us is in reality possessed of the most prevailing charms, the most resistless arts of pleasing; but then, let us unanimously agree, likewise, to make no further appeals; let us acquiesce in, and subscribe to her sentence, as final and conclusive." "Subscribe to her yourself, if you please," replied Miss Thalia, not a little nettled, and visibly chagrined at her sister's seeming confidence in the merit of her cause. "Without any further words or dissension between us," said Miss Aglaia, "I highly approve of the proposal. I don't care, sisters, for my part, how soon our pretty controversy is drawn to a final conclusion." This emulation of theirs soon reached the ears of their mistress Venus, who summoned them all immediately to make their personal appearance in court; and accordingly assumed the bed of justice with such a grace, and such an air of complacency, as is beyond the power of words to express; reflecting, with a secret pleasure, how in time past, upon a dispute of a like nature, the golden apple was adjudged to herself by the shepherd Paris, in preference both to Juno and Minerva. The court being set, and all the contending parties present, Venus directed each of them to exert her peculiar talents, and secret arts of incantation, to which she laid a peculiar claim. Each accordingly prepared to obey her orders: all of them equally fired with a fond desire and resistless hope of being pronounced the best qualified charmer, with equal pleasure and cheerfulness practised their studied arts and stratagems to please before her. But those resistless hopes, those fond desires of approbation with which they were all embarrassed, perfectly baffled their ambitious views, & turned out to their equal disadvantage. One screwed up her mouth in so prim a form, that she made the most frightful and disagreeable figure that could well be conceived; the second, through an inordinate ambition to shew her fine row of teeth, distorted every feature of her face; and the last, proud of her black sparkling eyes, rolled them about to such a violent degree, that, in the eye of her female and impartial judge, she appeared perfectly to squint. "Are these your arts ?" said Venus. "Are these your studied charms? Fye, ladies, fye! I almost blush for you. How dare you put on such artful airs before me? Get out of court: go home directly. Consult your respective minors with impartiality, and let me hear no more of your unnatural contentions. If you are desirous of resuming your former title, I mean that of the graces and my favourite attendants; if you are actually eager and fond of pleasing, never study any of those killing airs, I beseech you. As the least thought of that nature is too much, never think of your charms at all; for it is a maxim with me that will admit of no exception,--that she who is solicitous of pleasing over much, inevita bly gives disgust. In a word-" Affectation is the bane of Beauty." Ibid. |