My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellentcounsel against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morn-ing into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and expostula-ted very warmly with me upon this subject. He asked me what reasons,more than a mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving father's houseand my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had aprospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life ofease and pleasure. He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on onehand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroadupon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous inundertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things wereall either too far above me or too far below me; that mine was the middlestate, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he hadfound, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most sui-ted to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, thelabour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embar-rassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part ofmankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by thisone thing--viz, that this was the state of life which all other people en-vied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequence ofbeing born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the mid-dle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wiseman gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when heprayed to have neither poverty nor riches.
He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities oflife were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind, but thatthe middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to somany vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind ; nay, they werenot subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body ormind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravaganceson the one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean orinsufficient diet on the other hand, bring distemper upon themselves bythe natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station oflife was calculated for all kind of virtue and all kind of enjoyments; thatpeace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temper-ance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions,and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle sta-tion of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly through theworld, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the labours of thehands or of the head, not sold to a life of slavery for daily bread, nor ha-rassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace andthe body of rest, nor enraged with the passion of envy, or the secretburning lust of ambition for great things; but, in easy circumstances,sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of liv-ing, without the bitter; feeling that they are happy, and learning by ev-ery day's experience to know it more sensibly.
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