This rural politeness is very troublesome to a man of my temper, who generally take the chair that is next me, (141: 5) and walk first or last, in the front or in the rear, as chance directs. I have known my friend Sir Roger's dinner almost cold before the company could adjust the ceremonial, and be prevailed upon to sit down; and have heartily pitied my old friend, when I have seen him (10) forced to pick and cull his guests, as they sat at the several parts of his table, that he might drink their healths according to their respective ranks and qualities. Honest Will Wimble, who I should have thought had been altogether uninfected with ceremony, gives me (15) abundance of trouble in this particular. Though he has been fishing all the morning, he will not help himself at dinner till I am served. When we are going out of the hall, he runs behind me; and last night, as we were walking in the fields, stopped short at a stile till I came up to (20) it, and upon my making signs to him to get over, told me, with a serious smile, that, sure, I believed they had no manners in the country. There has happened another revolution in the point of good breeding, which relates to the conversation (25) among men of mode, and which I cannot but look upon as very extraordinary. It was certainly one of the first distinctions of a well-bred man to express everything that had the most remote appearance of being obscene in modest terms and distant phrases; whilst the clown, who had no such delicacy of conception and expression, clothed his ideas in most plain, homely terms that are the most obvious and natural. This kind of good manners was perhaps carried to an excess, so as to make (142: 5) conversation too stiff, formal, and precise; for which reason (as hypocrisy in one age is generally succeeded by atheism in another), conversation is in a great measure relapsed into the first extreme; so that at present several of our men of the town, and particularly those (10) who have been polished in France, make use of the most coarse, uncivilized words in our language, and utter themselves often in such a manner as a clown would blush to hear. This infamous piece of good breeding which reigns (15) among the coxcombs of the town has not yet made its way into the country; and as it is impossible for such an irrational way of conversation to last long among a people that make any profession of religion, or show of modesty, if the country gentlemen get into it they will (20) certainly be left in the lurch. Their good breeding will come too late to them, and they will be thought a parcel of lewd clowns, while they fancy themselves talking together like men of wit and pleasure.