SECTION V. Proper Time of Doing Business.

There are times and seasons for every lawful purpose of life, and a very material part of prudence is to judge rightly, and make the best of them. If you have to deal, for example, with a phlegmatic gloomy man, take him, if you can, over his bottle. This advice may seem, at first view, to give countenance to a species of fraud: but is it so? These hypochondriacal people have their fits and starts, and if you do not take them when they are in an agreeable state of mind, you are very likely to find them quite as much below par, as the bottle raises them above. But if you deal with them in this condition, they are no more themselves than in the former case. I therefore think the advice correct. It is on the same principles, and in the same belief, that I would advise you, when you deal with a covetous man, to propose your business to him immediately after he has been receiving, rather than expending money. So if you have to do with a drunkard, call on him in the morning; for then, if ever, his head is clear.

Again; if you know a person to be unhappy in his family, meet him abroad if possible, rather than at his own house. A statesman will not be likely to give you a favorable reception immediately after being disappointed in some of his schemes. Some people are always sour and ill humored from the hour of rising till they have dined.

And as in persons, so in things, the time is a matter of great consequence; an eye to the rise and fall of goods; the favorable season of importing and exporting;—these are some of the things which require the attention of those who expect any considerable share of success.

It is not certain but some dishonest person, under shelter of the rule, in this chapter, may gratify a wish to take unfair advantages of those with whom he deals. But I hope otherwise; for I should be sorry to give countenance, for one moment, to such conduct. My whole purpose (in this place) is to give direction to the young for securing their own rights; not for taking away the rights of others. The man who loves his neighbor as himself, will not surely put a wrong construction on what I have written. I would fain hope that there is no departure here or elsewhere, in the book, from sound christian morality; for it is the bible, on which I wish to see all moral rules based.