'Tis a thing of too great weight and consequence to be so tumbled and tossed and altered every moment, and wherein the wise determine once for all, having above all things regard to reason and the public observance.

We lay these masculine substitutions too much to heart, proposing a ridiculous eternity to our names.

We are, moreover, too superstitious in vain conjectures as to the future, that we derive from the words and actions of children.

Peradventure they might have done me an injustice, in dispossessing me of my right, for having been the most dull and heavy, the most slow and unwilling at my book, not of all my brothers only, but of all the boys in the whole province: whether about learning my lesson, or about any bodily exercise.

'Tis a folly to make an election out of the ordinary course upon the credit of these divinations wherein we are so often deceived.