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I am Your Loving Friend,
PATIENCE GIDDY.

These are great Calamities; but I met the other Day in the five Fields towards Chelsea, a pleasanter Tyrant than either of the above represented. A fat Fellow was puffing on in his open Waistcoat; a Boy of fourteen in a Livery, carrying after him his Cloak, upper Coat, Hat, Wig, and Sword. The poor Lad was ready to sink with the Weight, and could not keep up with his Master, who turned back every half Furlong, and wondered what made the lazy Young Dog lag behind.

There is something very unaccountable, that People cannot put themselves in the Condition of the Persons below them, when they consider the Commands they give. But there is nothing more common, than to see a Fellow (who if he were reduced to it, would not be hired by any Man living) lament that he is troubled with the most worthless Dogs in Nature.

It would, perhaps, be running too far out of common Life to urge, that he who is not Master of himself and his own Passions, cannot be a proper Master of another. AEquanimity in a Man’s own Words and Actions, will easily diffuse it self through his whole Family. Pamphilio has the happiest Household of any Man I know, and that proceeds from the humane regard he has to them in their private Persons, as well as in respect that they are his Servants. If there be any Occasion, wherein they may in themselves be supposed to be unfit to attend their Master’s Concerns, by reason of an Attention to their own, he is so good as to place himself in their Condition. I thought it very becoming in him, when at Dinner the other Day he made an Apology for want of more Attendants. He said, One of my Footmen is gone to the Wedding of his Sister, and the other I don’t expect to Wait, because his Father died but two Days ago.

T.