The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser

He that has never known adversity, is but half acquainted with others, or with himself. Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For, as it surrounds us with friends, who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.

Liberal and disinterested minds ask nothing in return for their services. They do not lend out benefits to usury: their friendship is disinterested upon expectation and profit; they are guided by the pleasure of friendship alone, a rare virtue-now out of date.

The late Sir George Staunton informed a friend, that he had visited a man in India who had committed a murder, and, in order not only to save his life, but what was of much more consequence, his cast, he submitted to the penalty imposed; this was that he should sleep for seven years on a bedstead, without any mattress, the surface of which was studded with points of iron resembling nails, but not so sharp as to penetrate the flesh. Sir George saw him in the fifth year of his probation, and his skin was then like the hide of a rhinoceros, but more callous; at that time, however, he could sleep comfortably on his bed of thorns, and remarked, that at the expiration of the term of his sentence, he should most probably continue that system from choice, which he had been obliged to adopt from necessity.