Fowle's New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

PORTSMOUTH, August 19.

It is truly pitiable, says a correspondent, that the motto; "Mind your Business," was not more strongly imprinted on the minds of numbers of the inhabitants of this place. The idle and Scurrilous practice of numbers collecting at the corners, or loitering about the streets, making their remarks on, and censuring the several characters that pass by them, ought to be reprobated by every upright citizen and real gentleman. Our correspondent further observes, that these satirizing characters are well known, and have business enough of their own, if they would but attend to it, to keep them in sufficient employ, without applying themselves so assiduously to that of their neighbours. Some of this order of beings call themselves gentlemen, (though their conduct speaks them the contrary) and affect to move in the first circles of the town; and others of the lower rank, chew the baneful poison, and roll it like a sweet morsel under their tongues. So long as this continues to be the practice of so many of our fellow-citizens, can we expect to be a happy and flourishing people? Calm reason replies, no.

Virtue, thou fair goddess, when wilt thou again revisit these shores? when shall we see the mantle of charity displayed in our streets, and our houses prove the temples of humanity: Then shall these characters hide their heads for shame, or flee from before the bright and all-searching rays of truth and justice.