How often should a woman be pregnant? Continually, or hardly ever? Or must there be a certain number of pregnancy anniversaries established by fashion? What do you, at the age of forty-three, have to say on the subject? Is it a fact that the laws of nature, or of the country, or of propriety, have ordained this time of life for sterility?

Let your letter be written as accurately as you are able,--I mean with regard to language, grammar, and stops; for as to the matter of it the less trouble you give yourself the better it will be. Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.

An honest man may really love a pretty girl, but only an idiot marries her merely because she is pretty.

Cautiously avoid speaking of the domestic affairs either of yourself, or of other people. Yours are nothing to them but tedious gossip; and theirs are nothing to you.

Character must be kept bright as well as clean.

I have been too long acquainted with human nature to have great regard for human testimony; and a very great degree of probability, supported by various concurrent circumstances, conspiring in one point, will have much greater weight with me, than human testimony upon oath, or even upon honour; both of which I have frequently seen considerably warped by private views.

Let us not only scatter benefits, but even strew flowers for our fellow-travellers, in the rugged ways of this wretched world.