“Neighbor,” said I to one of my friends who lives near me, “you have sadly splashed your stockings. In the state in which the roads now are, a little care is required in crossing them; which care, it is very plain, you have not exercised. If you were a little more careful, your appearance would not be a whit the less respectable.”
My neighbor civilly thanked me for my very excellent advice, and then added that, as I had so narrowly scrutinized his stockings, it would do me no harm to take a glance at my own. This I immediately did, and found to my confusion, that if he had been in the mud, I had as surely been in the mire. How it happened I cannot tell, but certain it is that I was by no means in a fit state to call him to account in the manner I had done. However, this advantage attended this affair, that I resolved another time to give a sharp look out for my own imperfections before I ventured to rebuke those of another.
If it were only half as easy to amend ourselves as to reprove others, and if by giving advice we could secure the benefit we are so intent to confer on our neighbors, how often would Old Humphrey be spared the mortifying reflection that he was scattering abroad what was wanted at home! Only two days ago, while in the very act of recommending more care in a servant who had upset a salt-cellar, he knocked a drinking-glass from the table with his elbow and broke it in pieces.
—Old Humphrey.