Or choosest thou rather to be speaking; to be speaking for thy only purpose in speaking, to show your teeth?  Rub them no longer, dear Shoestring:  do not premeditate murder:  do not for ever whiten:  Oh! that for my quiet and his own they were rotten.  But I will forget him, and give my hand to the courteous Umbra; he is a fine man indeed, but the soft creature bows below my apron-string before he takes it; but after the first ceremonies, he is as familiar as my physician, and his insignificancy makes me half ready to complain to him of all I would to my doctor.  But he is so courteous, that he carries half the messages of ladies’ ails in town to their midwives and nurses.  He understands too the art of medicine as far as to the cure of a pimple or a rash.  On occasions of the like importance, he is the most assiduous of all men living, in consulting and searching precedents from family to family; and then he speaks of his obsequiousness and diligence in the style of real services.  If you sneer at him, and thank him for his great friendship, he bows, and says, “Madam, all the good offices in my power, while I have any knowledge or credit, shall be at your service.”  The consideration of so shallow a being, and the intent application with which he pursues trifles, has made me carefully reflect upon that sort of men we usually call an Impertinent:  and I am, upon mature deliberation, so far from being offended with him, that I am really obliged to him; for though he will take you aside, and talk half an hour to you upon matters wholly insignificant with the most solemn air, yet I consider, that these things are of weight in his imagination, and he thinks he is communicating what is for my service.  If therefore it be a just rule to judge of a man by his intention, according to the equity of good breeding, he that is impertinently kind or wise, to do you service, ought in return to have a proportionable place both in your affection and esteem; so that the courteous Umbra deserves the favour of all his acquaintance; for though he never served them, he is ever willing to do it, and believes he does it.  But as impotent kindness is to be returned with all our abilities to oblige, so impotent malice is to be treated with all our force to depress it.  For this reason Flyblow (who is received in all the families in town through the degeneracy and iniquity of their manners) is to be treated like a knave, though he is one of the weakest of fools:  he has by rote, and at second-hand, all that can be said of any man of figure, wit, and virtue in town.  Name a man of worth, and this creature tells you the worst passage of his life.  Speak of a beautiful woman, and this puppy will whisper the next man to him, though he has nothing to say of her.  He is a Fly that feeds on the sore part, and would have nothing to live on, if the whole body were in health.  You may know him by the frequency of pronouncing the particle “but”; for which reason I never hear him spoke of with common charity, without using my “but” against him:  for a friend of mine saying the other day, Mrs. Distaff has wit, good humour, virtue, and friendship, this oaf added, “‘But’ she is not handsome.”  Coxcomb!  The gentleman was saying what I was, not what I was not.