5.  The chief praise to which a trader generally aspires, is that of punctuality, or an exact and rigorous observance of commercial promises and engagements; nor is there any vice of which he so much dreads the imputation, as of negligence and instability.  This is a quality which the interest of mankind requires to be diffused through all the ranks of life, but which, however useful and valuable, many seem content to want:  it is considered as a vulgar and ignoble virtue, below the ambition of greatness, or attention of wit, scarcely requisite among men of gaiety and spirit, and sold at its highest rate when it is sacrificed to a frolic or a jest.

6.  Every man has daily occasion to remark what vexations and inconveniences arise from this privilege of deceiving one another.  The active and vivacious have so long disdained the restraints of truth, that promises and appointments have lost their cogency, and both parties neglect their stipulations, because each concludes that they will be broken by the other.

7.  Negligence is first admitted in trivial affairs, and strengthened by petty indulgences.  He that is not yet hardened by custom, ventures not on the violation of important engagements, but thinks himself bound by his word in cases of property or danger, though he allows himself to forget at what time he is to meet ladies in the park, or at what tavern his friends are expecting him.

8.  This laxity of honor would be more tolerable, if it could be restrained to the play-house, the ball-room, or the card table; yet even there it is sufficiently troublesome, and darkens those moments with expectation, suspence, uncertainty and resentment, which are set aside for the softer pleasures of life, and from which we naturally hope for unmingled enjoyment, and total relaxation.  But he that suffers the slightest breach in his morality, can seldom tell what shall enter it, or how wide it shall be made; when a passage is opened, the influx of corruption is every moment wearing down opposition, and by slow degrees deluges the heart.

9. Aliger entered into the world a youth of lively imagination, extensive views, and untainted principles.  His curiosity incited him to range from place to place, and try all the varieties of conversation; his elegance of address and fertility of ideas gained him friends wherever he appeared; or at least he found the general kindness of reception always shewn to a young man whose birth and fortune gave him a claim to notice, and who has neither by vice or folly destroyed his privileges.

10. Aliger was pleased with this general smile of mankind, and being naturally gentle and flexible, was industrious to preserve it by compliance and officiousness, but did not suffer his desire of pleasing to vitiate his integrity.  It was his established maxim, that a promise is never to be broken; nor was it without long reluctance that he once suffered himself to be drawn away from a festal engagement by the importunity of another company.