PART 2
The first characteristic of a man is courage, with endurance; if he attempt any deed, great or small, he should do it with the spirit of a lion. Second, is prudence: time and place must be determined, and opportunity devised, like the Bak-heron, that stands intently eyeing its prey in the pool below.
The third is early rising, and causing others to do the same. The fourth is hardihood in war. The fifth is a generous distribution and division of food and property amongst family and friends.
The sixth is duly attending to the wants of the wife. The seventh is circumspection in love matters. The eighth is secrecy and privacy in the venereal act.
The ninth is patience and perseverance in all the business of life. The tenth is judgment in collecting and in storing up what may be necessary.
The eleventh is not to allow wealth and worldly success to engender pride and vanity, magnificence and ostentation. The twelfth is never aspiring to the unattainable.
The thirteenth is contentment with what the man has, if he can get no more. The fourteenth is plainness of diet. The fifteenth is to avoid over-sleep.
The sixteenth is to be diligent in the service of employers. The seventeenth is not to fly when attacked by robbers and villains. The eighteenth is working willingly; for instance, not taking into consideration the sun and shade if the labourer be obliged to carry a parcel.
The nineteenth is the patient endurance of trouble. The twentieth is to keep the eye fixed upon a great business; and the twenty-first is to study the means properest for success. Now, any person who combines these twenty one qualities is deservedly reputed an excellent man.
When choosing a son-in-law, the following characteristics should be aimed at: He must come from a large family, which has never known sin and poverty.
He must be young, handsome, wealthy, brave and influential; diligent in business, moderate in enjoying riches, sweet of speech, well versed in discharging his own dudes, known to the world as a mine of virtues, steadfast in mind, and a treasury of mercy, who gives alms and makes charities as far as his means permit.
Such a man is described by celebrated poets as a fit person to whom the daughter should be given in marriage.
And these are the defects and blemishes of a son-in-law: The man who is born in a low family, who is vicious, a libertine, pitiless, and ever sickly with dangerous disease, sinful and very wicked, poor and miserly, impotent, prone to conceal the virtues and to divulge the vices of others; a constant traveller, an absentee, one ever away from his home and residing abroad; a debtor, a beggar, a man who has no friendship with the good, or who, if he have it, breaks into quarrel upon trifling things-such a person the wise will not accept as a son-in-law.
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