If generous honesty, valor, and plain dealing be the cognizance of thy family or characteristic of thy country, hold fast such inclinations sucked in with thy first breath, and which lay in the cradle with thee.  Fall not into transforming degenerations, which under the old name create a new nation.  Be not an alien in thine own nation; bring not Orontes into Tiber; learn the virtues, not the vices, of thy foreign neighbors, and make thy imitation by discretion, not contagion.  Feel something of thyself in the noble acts of thy ancestors, and find in thine own genius that of thy predecessors.  Rest not under the expired merits of others; shine by those of thine own.  Flame not, like the central fire which enlighteneth no eyes, which no man seeth, and most men think there is no such thing to be seen.  Add one ray unto the common lustre; add not only to the number, but the note of thy generation; and prove not a cloud, but an asterisk in thy region.

Since thou hast an alarum in thy breast, which tells thee thou hast a living spirit in thee above two thousand times in an hour, dull not away thy days in slothful supinity and the tediousness of doing nothing.  To strenuous minds there is an inquietude in overquietness and no laboriousness in labor; and to tread a mile after the slow pace of a snail, or the heavy measures of the lazy of Brazilia, were a most tiring penance, and worse than a race of some furlongs at the Olympics.  The rapid courses of the heavenly bodies are rather imitable by our thoughts than our corporeal motions; yet the solemn motions of our lives amount unto a greater measure than is commonly apprehended.  Some few men have surrounded the globe of the earth; yet many, in the set locomotions and movements of their days, have measured the circuit of it, and twenty thousand miles have been exceeded by them.  Move circumspectly, not meticulously, and rather carefully solicitous than anxiously solicitudinous.  Think not there is a lion in the way, nor walk with leaden sandals in the paths of goodness; but in all virtuous motions let prudence determine thy measures.  Strive not to run, like Hercules, a furlong in a breath:  festination may prove precipitation; deliberating delay may be wise cunctation, and slowness no slothfulness.

Despise not the obliquities of younger ways, nor despair of better things whereof there is yet no prospect.  Who would imagine that Diogenes, who in his younger days was a falsifier of money, should, in the after course of his life, be so great a contemner of metal?  Some negroes, who believe the resurrection, think that they shall rise white.  Even in this life regeneration may imitate resurrection; our black and vicious tinctures may wear off, and goodness clothe us with candor.  Good admonitions knock not always in vain.  There will be signal examples of God’s mercy, and the angels must not want their charitable rejoices for the conversion of lost sinners.  Figures of most angles do nearest approach unto circles,