My dear friend:  Your apprenticeship is near out, and you are soon to set up for yourself; that approaching moment is a critical one for you, and an anxious one for me.  A tradesman who would succeed in his way, must begin by establishing a character of integrity and good manners; without the former, nobody will go to his shop at all; without the latter, nobody will go there twice.  This rule does not exclude the fair arts of trade.  He may sell his goods at the best price he can, within certain bounds.  He may avail himself of the humor, the whims, and the fantastical tastes of his customers; but what he warrants to be good must be really so, what he seriously asserts must be true, or his first fraudulent profits will soon end in a bankruptcy.  It is the same in higher life, and in the great business of the world.  A man who does not solidly establish, and really deserve, a character of truth, probity, good manners, and good morals, at his first setting out in the world, may impose, and shine like a meteor for a very short time, but will very soon vanish, and be extinguished with contempt.  People easily pardon, in young men, the common irregularities of the senses:  but they do not forgive the least vice of the heart.  The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse; always harder.  A young liar will be an old one; and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.  But should a bad young heart, accompanied with a good head (which, by the way, very seldom is the case), really reform in a more advanced age, from a consciousness of its folly, as well as of its guilt; such a conversion would only be thought prudential and political, but never sincere.  I hope in God, and I verily. believe, that you want no moral virtue.  But the possession of all the moral virtues, in ‘actu primo’, as the logicians call it, is not sufficient; you must have them in ‘actu secundo’ too; nay, that is not sufficient neither—­you must have the reputation of them also.  Your character in the world must be built upon that solid foundation, or it will soon fall, and upon your own head.  You cannot, therefore, be too careful, too nice, too scrupulous, in establishing this character at first, upon which your whole depends.  Let no conversation, no example, no fashion, no ‘bon mot’, no silly desire of seeming to be above, what most knaves, and many fools, call prejudices, ever tempt you to avow, excuse, extenuate, or laugh at the least breach of morality; but show upon all occasions, and take all occasions to show, a detestation and abhorrence of it.  There, though young, you ought to be strict; and there only, while young, it becomes you to be strict and severe.  But there, too, spare the persons while you lash the crimes.  All this relates, as you easily judge, to the vices of the heart, such as lying, fraud, envy, malice, detraction, etc., and I do not extend it to the little frailties of youth, flowing from high spirits and warm blood.  It would ill become you, at your age, to declaim against them, and sententiously censure a gallantry, an accidental excess of the table, a frolic, an inadvertency; no, keep as free from them yourself as you can:  but say nothing against them in others.  They certainly mend by time, often by reason; and a man’s worldly character is not affected by them, provided it be pure in all other respects.