Among the sources of those innumerable calamities which from age to age have overwhelmed mankind, may be reckoned as one of the principal the abuse o… - George Horne

Among the grievances of modern days, much complained of, but with little hope of redress, is the matter of receiving and paying visits, the number of which, it is generally agreed, “has been increasing, is increased, and ought to be diminished.”… Nor is this complaint by any means peculiar to the times in which we have the honour to live. Cowley was out of all patience on the subject above a hundred years ago. “If we engage,” says he, “in a large acquaintance, and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time; we expose our life to a ‘quotidian ague of frigid impertinencies,’ which would make a wise man tremble to think of.”

Talk often, but not long. The talent of haranguing in private company is insupportable.

But as Cowley was apt to be a little out of humour between whiles, let us hear the honourable, pious, and sweet-tempered Mr. Boyle, who, among the troubles of life, enumerates as one “the business of receiving senseless visits, whose continuance, if otherwise unavoidable, is capable, in my opinion, to justify the retiredness of a hermit.”