The habitation of Paulo has at once the air of a nobleman and a merchant.  You see the servants act with affection to their master, and satisfaction in themselves:  the master meets you with an open countenance, full of benevolence and integrity:  your business is despatched with that confidence and welcome which always accompanies honest minds:  his table is the image of plenty and generosity, supported by justice and frugality.  After we had dined here, our affair was to visit Avaro:  out comes an awkward fellow with a careful countenance; “Sir, would you speak with my master?  May I crave your name?” After the first preambles, he leads us into a noble solitude, a great house that seemed uninhabited; but from the end of the spacious hall moves towards us Avaro, with a suspicious aspect, as if he believed us thieves; and as for my part, I approached him as if I knew him a cut-purse.  We fell into discourse of his noble dwelling, and the great estate all the world knew he had to enjoy in it:  and I, to plague him, fell a commending Paulo’s way of living.  “Paulo,” answered Avaro, “is a very good man; but we who have smaller estates, must cut our coat according to our cloth.”  “Nay,” says I, “every man knows his own circumstance best; you are in the right, if you haven’t wherewithal.”  He looked very sour (for it is, you must know, the utmost vanity of a mean-spirited rich man to be contradicted, when he calls himself poor).  But I was resolved to vex him, by consenting to all he said; the main design of which was, that he would have us find out, he was one of the wealthiest men in London, and lived like a beggar.  We left him, and took a turn on the ’Change.  My friend was ravished with Avaro.  “This,” said he, “is certainly a sure man.”  I contradicted him with much warmth, and summed up their different characters as well as I could.  “This Paulo,” said I, “grows wealthy by being a common good; Avaro, by being a general evil:  Paulo has the art, Avaro the craft of trade.  When Paulo gains, all men he deals with are the better:  whenever Avaro profits, another certainly loses.  In a word, Paulo is a citizen, and Avaro a cit.”  I convinced my friend, and carried the young gentleman the next day to Paulo, where he will learn the way both to gain, and enjoy a good fortune.  And though I cannot say, I have, by keeping him from Avaro, saved him from the gallows, I have prevented his deserving it every day he lives:  for with Paulo he will be an honest man, without being so for fear of the law; as with Avaro, he would have been a villain within the protection of it.

St. James’s Coffee-house, June 6.