Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 141, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1903 — OLD-TIME ADVISERS. [ARTICLE]

OLD-TIME ADVISERS.

Conduct Thought Becoming in Young Men Three Hundred Years Ago. Mr. Peachem in the “Compleat Gentleman,” written early in the seventeenth century, addressing himself to young students, says: “With the gown you have put on the man. Your first care should be the choice of company. Men of the soundest reputation for Religion, Life and Learning, that their conversation may be to you a living and a moving library. For recreation seek those of your own rank and quality.” In “Home Life Under the Stuarts” further quotations from the work are given. To keep good company he enjoins as of the first importance. Frugality and a moderate diet are to be recommended. “Affability in Discourse” a paragraph to itself: “Giving entertainment in a sweet and liberal manner, and with a. cheerful courtesie seasoning your talk at the table among grave and serious discourses with conceipts of wit and pleasant inventions, as ingenious Epigrames, Merry Tales, witty Questions and Answers, etc.” It must be admitted, however, that the specimens of wit which he gives do not seem to modern tpste in jhe least funny. • From the letters of Lady/ Brilliana Harley to her son at Oxford we get a glimpse of the home side, of the anxieties of a very careful and tender mother, her advice as to health and religion, and her provision for his comfort. She writes: “Deare Ned, if you would have anythinge send me word; or if I thought a cold pye, or such a thinge, would Ije of any pleasure to you, I would send it you. But your fathey says you care not sos if, and Mrs. Pirson tells me, when her sonne veas at Oxford, and sliee sent him such thinges, he prayed her that she would not.” Her son seems to have set her mind at ease on the subject, for the next year she yy rites? “I bane made a pye to send you; it is a kide pye. I believe you haue not that meat ordinarily at Oxford; on halfe of the pye is seasned with on kind of seasning, and the other with another. I tbinke to send it by this carrier.” Again she writes: “I like the stufe for your cloths well; but the cullor of those for euery day I doo not like so well; but the silk ekamlet I like very well. Let your stokens be allways of the same culler of your cloths.”