6.  If desired to play at cards deeper than you would, refuse it ludicrously; tell them, “If you were sure to lose, you might possibly sit down; but that as fortune may be favourable, you dread the thought of having too much money, ever since you found what an incumbrance it was to poor Harlequin, and therefore you are resolved never to put yourself in the way of winning more than such and such a sum a day.”  This light way of declining invitations to vice and folly, is more becoming a young man, than philosophical or sententious refusals, which would only be laughed at.

7.  Now I am on the subject of cards, I must not omit mentioning the necessity of playing them well and genteelly, if you would be thought to have kept good company.  I would by no means recommend playing at cards as a part of your study, lest you should grow too fond of it, and the consequences prove bad.  It were better not to know a diamond from a club, than to become a gambler; but, as custom has introduced innocent card playing at most friendly meetings, it marks the gentleman to handle them genteelly, and play them well; and as I hope you will play only for small sums, should you lose your money pray lose it with temper:  or win, receive your winnings without either elation or greediness.

8.  To write well and correct, and in a pleasing style, is another part of polite education.  Every man who has the use of his eyes and his right hand, can write whatever hand he pleases.  Nothing is so illiberal as a school-boy’s scrawl.  I would not have you learn a stiff formal hand-writing, like that of a school-master, but a genteel, legible, and liberal hand, and to be able to write quick.  As to the correctness and elegancy of your writing, attention to grammar does the one, and to the best authors, the other.  Epistolary correspondence should not be carried on in a studied or affected style, but the language should flow from the pen, as naturally and as easily as it would from the mouth.  In short, a letter should be penned in the same style as you would talk to your friend, if he was present.

9.  If writing well shews the gentleman, much more so does spelling well.  It is so essentially necessary for a gentleman, or a man of letters, that one false spelling may fix a ridicule on him for the remainder of his life.  Words in books are generally well spelled, according to the orthography of the age; reading, therefore, with attention, will teach every one to spell right.  It sometimes happens, that words shall be spelled differently by different authors; but, if you spell them upon the authority of one in estimation of the public, you will escape ridicule.  Where there is but one way of spelling a word, by your spelling it wrong, you will be sure to be laughed at.  For a woman of a tolerable education would laugh at and despise her lover, if he wrote to her, and the words were ill-spelled.  Be particularly attentive, then, to your spelling.