_These who sleep with dogs rise up with fleas_. _It is bad company that brings men to the gallows_. Burckhardt in his collection of Arabic proverbs, gives the following remarkable one:—_He who introduces himself between the onion and the peel_, _goes not forth without its strong smell_. But on the other hand we have in the Spanish, _Associate with the_ GOOD, _and thou shall be esteemed one of them_. One Bird in the Hand is worth two in the Bush; and the Italians say, Better have an egg to-day than an hen to-morrow. But this carries the idea too far. Ray, quotes another, which is much better.— _He that leaves certainty_, _and sticks to chance_, _When fools pipe_, _he may dance_. This adage, like the fable of the dog and the shadow, advises us not to part with what we actually possess, on the distant prospect of some doubtful or uncertain profit. It seems a kind of madness in any one who has a competence, or is exercising with fair success any business or profession, to hazard all in pursuit of some new scheme, which, however promising in appearance, may fail and involve him in ruin. And yet how many are the victims of this! How many instances in our own country do the records of the year 1825 supply. _London Post-Office_. THE ordinary business of each day is, in letters in the inland office alone, 35,000 letters received, and 40,000 sent (23,475,000 annually); exclusive of the numbers in the foreign office department and the ship-letter office, and altogether independent of the two-penny post. The number of newspapers daily varies from 25,000 to 60,000 (on Saturday 40,000, and on Monday 50,000), of which number about 20,000 an put into the office ten minutes before six o’clock. After that hour each newspaper is charged one half-penny, which yields a revenue of fully £1,000 a year, and of which 240,000 newspapers are annually put into the office from six to a quarter before eight o’clock. The revenue derived from charges for early delivery in London is £4 000, and the sum obtained by the charges of _one penny_ on each letter given to the postmen, who go round with bells to collect the letters, is £3,000 a year, giving 720,000, or pearls 2,000 daily. The revenue of London is 6,000 a week, above £300,000 a year; and yet of all this vast annual revenue there has only been lost by defaulters £200 in twenty-five years. The franks amount in a morning to 4,000 or 5,000, or more. Newspapers can only be franked for foreign parts to the first port at which the mail arrives; after this they are charged postage according to their weight, in consequence of which an English daily paper costs in St. Petersburgh £40 sterling per annum. FLATTERY AND FRIENDSHIP.