Yet whatever good I may do, I cannot pretend that I at first entered into the practice of this virtue from a principle of public spirit; for I remember that when a child I had a violent inclination to be ever talking in my own praise, and being continually told that it was ill-manners and once severely whipped for it, the confined stream formed itself a new channel, and I began to speak for the future in the dispraise of others. This I found more agreeable to company and almost as much so to myself: for what great difference can there be between putting yourself up or putting your neighbor down? _Scandal_, like other virtues, is in part its own reward, as it gives us the satisfaction of making ourselves appear better than others, or others no better than ourselves. My mother, good woman, and I, have heretofore differed upon this account. She argued that Scandal spoilt all good conversation, and I insisted that without it there would be no such thing. Our disputes once rose so high that we parted tea-tables, and I concluded to entertain my acquaintance in the kitchen. The first day of this separation we both drank tea at the same time, but she with her visitors in the parlor. She would not hear of the least objection to any one's character, but began a new sort of discourse in some such queer philosophical manner as this: _I am mightily pleased sometimes,_ says she, _when I observe and consider that the world is not so bad as people out of humor imagine it to be. There is something amiable, some good quality or other in every body. If we were only to speak of people that are least respected, there is such a one is very dutiful to her father, and methinks has a fine set of teeth; such a one is very respectful to her husband; such a one is very kind to her poor neighbors, and besides has a very handsome shape; such a one is always ready to serve a friend, and in my opinion there is not a woman in town that has a more agreeable air or gait._ This fine kind of talk, which lasted near half an hour, she concluded by saying, _I do not doubt but every one of you has made the like observations, and I should be glad to have the conversation continued upon this subject._ Just at this juncture I peeped in at the door, and never in my life before saw such a set of simple vacant countenances. They looked somehow neither glad nor sorry, nor angry nor pleased, nor indifferent nor attentive; but (excuse the simile) like so many images of rye dough. I, in the kitchen, had already begun a ridiculous story of Mr. ----'s intrigue with his maid, and his wife's behavior on the discovery; at some of the passages we laughed heartily; and one of the gravest of mamma's company, without making any answer to her discourse got up _to go and see what the girls were so merry about_: she was followed by a second, and shortly by a third, till at last the old gentlewoman found herself quite alone, and being convinced that her