The following adages are here worthy of our consideration:--"He that does you an ill turn will not forgive you"; "Pardon others often, thyself seldom"; "We are bound to forgive an enemy, but we are not bound to trust him";[225:A] "Better ride alone than have a bad man's company"; "Haste is the beginning of wrath, and its end repentance"; "It is wiser to prevent a quarrel than to revenge it"; "If thou wouldst be borne with, bear with others." To these we may add the oft-used saw, "The absent are always wrong," without at all endorsing its truth. The absent are often quite as right as the other people, and are merely unable through absence to protect themselves from defamation. Poverty and riches naturally find a place in proverb-lore. "Poverty," says an old author, "is no crime, and it is no credit"; but the truth is, it is impossible to generalise quite so dogmatically as this--for poverty may be a crime when a lazy ne'er-do-well allows his wife and children to come to rags, and, on the other hand, it may be a credit when a man has done his best and foresworn all the dirty little tricks that have enriched his trade rivals. It is sometimes too readily and sentimentally assumed that poverty is itself a benediction; hence such sayings as "The poor are God's receivers and the angels are His auditors," but the real state of the case is excellently well put in the proverb, "There are God's poor, and the devil's poor." "Honour and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part, there all the honour lies." Everywhere in life, some one has admirably said, the true question is not what we gain, but rather what we do. "Poverty need not be shame, but being ashamed of it is," poverty of spirit being a more distressing state of things than emptiness of pocket. Let us turn to the wisdom of those who have gone before us, and see what teaching for our edification we may find. "Nothing is to be got without pains except poverty"; "Dependence is a poor trade to follow"; "Opportunities do not generally wait"; "Enough is a plenty, too much is pride"; "The groat is ill-saved which shames its master"; "Providence provides for the provident"; "To bear is to conquer"; "Poverty craves much, but avarice more"; "Gain ill-gotten is loss"; "Poverty is the mother of all arts"; "Content is the true philosopher's stone"; "If honesty cannot, knavery must not"; "Poor and content is rich"; "Flatterers haunt not cottages"; "Thrive honestly, or remain poor." In a manuscript of the fifteenth century we found the following excellent precepts amongst many others, the whole being much too long to quote: