_Troublesome or ill-timed visits._
LXXXIII. There are some men, who by being over attentive and civil to
their friends, become intolerable. I speak of those, who make visiting
an employment or occupation, and who are always exercising themselves
in that way, as if it was their profession. These are a sort of people,
who not knowing what to do with themselves, or how to employ their own
time, run about tiring and breaking-in upon the avocations of other
people, who are engaged in most honourable and important occupations;
they are a sort of robbers of men’s time, who steal from them that,
which it is necessary for them to employ in their business; they are
a sort of knights errant, whose tongues instead of spears, are ever
prepared for attack, and who busy themselves in doing wrongs, instead
of redressing them; a kind of dealers in common-place phrases, who go
about like beggars from house to house; and who may be termed cheats
in good-breeding, and such, as would impose on the world vexation for
obsequiousness.
LXXXIV. Those who think to recommend themselves to the good graces of
men in power, by a repetition of visits, deceive themselves greatly;
for what merit can there be in keeping such a person confined an
hour to his room every third day, where he may possibly remain as
uneasily, as if he was sitting in the stocks, and be deprived of an
opportunity of taking some amusement or recreation he is fond of, or
else, of employing that time in some business he wanted to attend to?
What most commonly happens in these cases is, that the visitor has no
sooner taken leave and turned his back, than the person visited vents a
thousand curses on his impertinence; and if there should chance to be
any one by to whom he can unbosom himself in confidence, he declares to
him, that he never met with a greater savage in all his life.
LXXXV. I feel much for ministers who are exposed to this sort of
persecution; for to the heavy load of their office that lays on them,
may be added the surcharge of these tiresome visits, the weight of
which may possibly sit more burthensome on them, than that of the whole
duty they have to do besides.