"Now, son," says my father, "let me hear your request."--"It is only, sir," said I, "preferment for the deserving, equal to his merit." My father asked him if he understood the duty of a gorpell. He did not reply yes, but beginning, gave a compendious sort of history of his whole duty; at which all the colambs were very much surprised, for even his comrades were not apprised, or ever imagined, he knew more of military affairs than themselves. My father then asked him if he knew how to behave as a duff; but he made as little difficulty of that as the other, going through the several parts of duty in all the different branches, in peace and war, at home and abroad. "Son," says my father, "it is a mystery to me you should have found out more in an hour than I myself could in half an age; for this man was born in my palang, of my own lask, and has been mine and my father's these forty years. I shall be glad if you will look on the rest of my lasks, and give me your opinion; I may have more as deserving." I told him such as Nasgig were not to be met with very often; but when they were found, ought to be cherished accordingly.
"Sir," says I, "nature works upon the same sort of materials divers ways; on some in sport, and some in earnest; and if the necessary qualifications of a great man are impressed on our mass, it is odds but we improve regularly into one, though it may never be publicly known, or even to ourselves, till a proper occasion; for as a curious genius will be most inquisitive after, and is most in the end retentive of knowledge, so no man is less ostentatious of it. He covets knowledge, not from the prospect of gain, but merely for its own sake; the very knowing being his recompense: and if I may presume to give you a hint how properly to bestow your favours, let it be on persons like this; for the vain, knowing man, who is always showing it, as he for the most part labours for it, to show out with, and procure his rise by it, were it not for the hopes of that, would not think knowledge worth attaining; and as his rise is his aim, if he could invent any more expeditious method than that, he would not pretermit any ill act that might advance him according to his lust of rising. But the man who aims at perfection, from his natural inclination, must, to attain his end, avoid all ill courses, as impediments to that perfection he lusts after; and that, by Nasgig's worth being so little known, I'll answer for it is his character. And this being true, yourself will deduce the consequence, which is the fitter man to bear place; for with me it is a maxim, he that labours after truth for truth's sake (and that he surely must who proposes no worldly view in it) can't arrive at his ends by false methods, but is always the truest friend to himself and others, the truest subject to his lord, and the most faithful servant to his God."