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LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS TO HIS SON.

One Thing at a

Time.

A man is fit for neither business nor pleasure who either cannot, or does not, command and direct his attention to the present object, and in some degree banish for that time all other objects from his thoughts. If at a ball, a supper, a party of pleasure, a man were to be solving, in his own mind, a problem of Euclid, he would be a very bad companion, and make a very poor figure in that company; or, if in studying a problem in his closet he were to think of a minuet, I am apt to believe that he would make a very poor mathematician. There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time. The Pensionary de Witt, who was torn to pieces in the year 1672, did the whole business of the Republic, and yet had time left to go to assemblies in the evening, and sup in company. Being asked how he could possibly find time to go through so much business, and yet amuse himself in the evenings as he did, he answered, There was nothing so easy; for that it was only doing one thing at a time, and never putting off anything until tomorrow that could be done today. This steady and undissipated attention to one object is a sure mark of superior genius, as hurry, bustle and agitation are the neverfailing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.

There is no surer sign in the world of a little weak mind than inattention. Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well; and nothing can be done well without attention. It is the sure answer of a fool, when

Attention.

you ask him about anything that was said or

done, where he was present, that "truly he did not mind it." And why did not the fool mind it? What had

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Indifference.

he else to do there but to mind what was doing? A man of sense sees, hears and retains everything that passes where he is. I desire I may never hear you talk of not minding, nor complain, as most fools do, of a treacherous memory. Mind not only what people say, but how they say it; and if you have any sagacity you may discover more truth by your eyes than by your ears. People can say what they will, but they cannot look just as they will; and their looks frequently discover what their words are calculated to conceal. Observe, therefore, people's looks carefully when they speak, not only to you, but to each other. I have often guessed by people's faces what they were saying, though I could not hear one word they said. The most material knowledge of all, I mean the knowledge of the world, is never to be acquired without great attention; and I know many old people, who, though they have lived long in the world, are but children still as to the knowledge of it, from their levity and inattention. Certain forms, which all people comply with, and certain arts which all people aim at, hide in some degree the truth, and give a general exterior resemblance almost to everybody. Attention and sagacity must see through that veil, and discover the natural character. If a man with whom you are but barely acquainted, to whom you have made no offers, nor given any marks of friendship, makes you, on a sudden, strong professions of his, receive them with civility, but do not repay them with confidence; he certainly means to deceive you; for one man does not fall in love with another at sight. If a man uses strong protestations or oaths to make you believe a thing, which is of itself so likely and probable, that the bare saying of it would be sufficient, depend upon it he lies, and is highly interested in making you believe it; or else he would not take so much pains.

I know no one thing more offensive to a company than inattention and distraction. It is showing them the usual contempt; and people never forgive contempt. No man is distrait with the man he fears or the woman he loves, which is a

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Inattention.

proof that every man can get the better of that distraction when he thinks it worth his while to do so; and take my word for it, it is always worth his while. For my own part I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one; for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt; whereas the absent man, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his

attention.

Besides, can an absent man make any observations upon the characters, customs and manners of the company? No. He may be in the best companies all his lifetime (if they will admit him, which, if I were they, I would not) and never be one jot the wiser. I never will converse with an absent man; one may as well talk to a deaf one. It is, in truth, a practical blunder to address ourselves to a man who we see plainly neither hears, minds nor understands us. Moreover, I aver that no man is in any degree fit for either business or conversation who cannot and does not direct and command his attention to the present subject, be that what it will.

Clearness and Correctness in Business Letters.

The first thing necessary in writing letters of business is extreme clearness and perspicuity; every paragraph should be so clear and unambiguous that the dullest fellow in the world may not be able to mistake it, nor obliged to read it twice in order to understand it. This necessary clearness implies a correctness, without excluding an elegance of style. Tropes, figures, antitheses, epigrams, etc., would be as misplaced and as impertinent in letters of business as they are sometimes (if judiciously used) proper and pleasing in familiar letters upon common and trite subjects. In business an elegant simplicity, the result of care, not of labor, is required. Business must be well, not affectedly, dressed, but by no means negligently. Let your first attention be to clearness, and read every paragraph after you have written it, in the critical view of discovering whether it is

possible that any one man can mistake the true sense of it, and correct it accordingly.

Letters of business will not only admit of, but be the better for, certain graces; but then they must be scattered with a sparing and with a skilful hand; they must fit their place exactly. They must decently adorn without incumbering, and modestly shine without glaring.

People will in a great degree, and not without reason, form their opinion of you, upon that which they have of your friends; and there is a Spanish proverb which says, "Tell me whom you live with and I will tell you who you are." One may fairly suppose that a man who makes a knave or fool his friend has something very bad to do or to conceal. But at the same time that you carefully decline the friendship of knaves and fools, if it can be called friendship, there is no occasion to make either of them your enemies, wantonly and unprovoked; for they are numerous bodies, and I would choose a secure neutrality than alliance or war with either of them.

Choice of Friends and Company.

You may be a declared enemy to their vices and follies without being marked out by them as a personal one. Their enmity is the next dangerous thing to their friendship. Have a real reserve with almost everybody, and have a seeming reserve with almost nobody, for it is very disagreeable to seem reserved and very dangerous not to be so. Few people find the true medium; many are ridiculously mysterious and reserved upon trifles, and many imprudently communicative of all they know. The next thing to the choice of your friends is the choice of your company. Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep company with people above you. There you rise, as much as you sink with people below you; for (as I have mentioned before) you are whatever the company you keep is. Do not mistake when I say company above you, and think that I mean with regard to their birth; that is the least consideration; but I mean with regard to their merit and light in which the world considers them.

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The Secret of the The Secret of the Duke of Marlborough's Success.

Of all the men that I ever knew in my life—and I knew him extremely well-the late Duke of Marlborough possessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say engrossed them, and indeed he got the most by them; for I will venture-contrary to the custom of profound historians, who always assign deep cause for great events-to ascribe the better half of the Duke of Marlborough's greatness and riches to those graces. He was eminently illiterate, wrote bad English and spelled it still worse. He had no share of what is commonly called parts; that is, he had no brightness, nothing shining in his genius. He had, most undoubtedly, an excellent good plain understanding, with sound judgment. But these alone would probably have raised him but something higher than they found him, which was page to King James the Second's Queen. There the graces protected and promoted him, for while he was an ensign of the guards, the Duchess of Cleveland, then favorite mistress to Charles the Second, struck by those very graces, gave him five thousand pounds, with which he immediately bought an annuity for his life of five hundred pounds a year, of my grandfather, Halifax, which was the foundation of his subsequent fortune. His figure was beautiful, but his manner was irresistible to either man or woman. It was by this engaging, graceful manner that he was enabled during all his war to connect the varied and jarring powers of the Grand Alliance, and to carry them on to the main object of the war, notwithstanding their private and separate views, jealousies and wrongheadednesses. Whatever court he went to and he was often obliged to go himself to some resty and refractory ones-he as constantly prevailed and brought them into his measures. The Pensionary Heinsius, a venerable old minister, grown gray in business, and who had governed the Republic of the United Provinces for more than forty years, was absolutely governed by the Duke of Marlborough, as that Republic feels to this day. He was always cool, and nobody ever observed the least variation in his countenance; he could refuse more gracefully than other people could