We, therefore, regard society as a grand machine, in which each member has the place best fitted for him; or, to make use of a more common illustration, as a vast drama, in which every person has the part allotted to him most appropriate to his abilities. One enacts the King, others the Lords, others the Commons; but all obey the Great Director, who best knows what is in man. Regarding things in this light, all arrogance, all pride, all envyings and contempt of others, from their relative degrees, disappear, as emotions to which we have no pretensions. We neither endowed ourselves with high birth or eminent talents. We are altogether beings of a creation independent of our own will; and, therefore, bearing our own honors as a gift, not as a right, we should condescend to our inferiors, (whose place it might have been our lot to fill,) and regard with deference our superiors, whom Heaven, by so elevating, has intended that we should respect. This sentiment of order in the mind, this conviction of the beautiful harmony in a well-organized civil society, gives us dignity with our inferiors, without alloying it with the smallest particle of pride; by keeping them at a due distance, we merely maintain ourselves and them in the rank in which a higher Power has placed us; and the condescension of our general manners to them, and our kindness in their exigencies, and generous approbation of their worth, are sufficient acknowledgments of sympathy, to show that we avow the same nature with themselves, the same origin, the same probation, the same end. Our demeanor with our equals is more a matter of policy. To be indiscreetly familiar, to allow of liberties being taken with your good-nature; all this is likely to happen with people of the same rank with ourselves, unless we hold our mere acquaintance at a proper distance, by a certain reserve. A woman may be gay, ingenuous, perfectly amiable to her associates, and yet reserved. Avoid all sudden intimacies, all needless secret-telling, all closeting about nonsense, caballing, taking mutual liberties with each other in regard to domestic arrangements; in short, beware of familiarity! The kind of familiarity which is common in families, and amongst women of the same classes in society, is that of an indiscriminate gossiping; an interchange of thoughts without any effusion of the heart. Then an unceremonious way of reproaching each other, for a real or supposed neglect; a coarse manner of declaring your faults; a habit of jangling on trifles; a habit of preferring your own whims or ease before that of the persons about you; an indelicate way of breaking into each other’s privacy. In short, doing everything that declares the total oblivion of all politeness and decent manners. This series of errors happens every day amongst brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and female acquaintances: and what are the consequences? Distaste, disgust, everlasting quarrels, and perhaps total rupture in the end!