3.  Upon which the Sparkler bursting out into a laugh, he insulted her with several questions, relating to the bigness and distance of the moon and stars; and after every interrogatory would be winking upon me, and smiling at his sister’s ignorance. Jack gained his point; for the mother was pleased, and all the servants stared at the learning of their young master. Jack was so encouraged at this success, that for the first week he dealt wholly in paradoxes.  It was a common jest with him to pinch one of his sister’s lap-dogs, and afterwards prove he could not feel it.

4.  When the girls were sorting a set of knots, he would demonstrate to them that all the ribbons were of the same colour; or rather, says Jack, of no colour at all.  My Lady Lizard herself, though she was not a little pleased with her son’s improvements, was one day almost angry with him; for, having accidentally burnt her fingers as she was lighting her lamp for her tea-pot, in the midst of her anguish, Jack laid hold of the opportunity to instruct her that there was no such thing as heat in fire.  In short, no day passed over our heads, in which Jack did not imagine he made the whole family wiser than they were before.

5.  That part of his conversation which gave me the most pain, was what passed among those country gentlemen that came to visit us.  On such occasions Jack usually took upon him to be the mouth of the company; and thinking himself obliged to be very merry, would entertain us with a great many odd sayings and absurdities of their college cook.  I found this fellow had made a very strong impression upon Jack’s imagination, which he never considered was not the case of the rest of the company, till after many repeated trials he found that his stories seldom any body laugh but himself.

6.  I all this while looked upon Jack as a young tree shooting out into blossoms before its time; the redundancy of which, though it was a little unseasonably, seemed to foretell an uncommon fruitfulness.

In order to wear out the vein of pedantry, which ran through his conversation, I took him out with me one evening, and first of all insinuated to him this rule, which I had myself learned from a very great author, “To think with the wise, but talk with the vulgar,” Jack’s, good sense soon made him reflect that he had exposed himself to the laughter of the ignorant by a contrary behaviour; upon which he told me, that he would take care for the future to keep his notions to himself, and converse in the common received sentiments of mankind.

7.  He at the same time desired me to give him any other rules of conversation, which I thought might he for his improvement.  I told him I would think of it; and accordingly, as I have a particular affection for the young man, I gave him the next morning the following rules in writing, which may, perhaps, have contributed to make him the agreeable man he now is.