not show them by your inattention that you think them so; but rather take their tone, and conform in some degree to their weakness, instead of manifesting your contempt for them. There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt; and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult. [Same date.]
Flattery.—Most people (I might say all people)
have their weaknesses; they have their aversions
and their likings to such and such things; so that,
if you were to laugh at a man for his aversion to a
cat, or cheese (which are common antipathies), or,
by inattention and negligence, to let them come in
his way where you could prevent it, he would, in
the first case, think himself insulted, and, in the
second, slighted; and would remember both.
Whereas your care to procure for him what he likes,
and to remove from him what he hates, shows him
that he is at least an object of your attention, flatters
his vanity, and makes him possibly more your friend
than a more important service would have done.
With regard to women, attentions still below these
are necessary, and, by the custom of the world, in
some measure due, according to the laws of good
breeding.
His Letters.—My long and frequent letters,
