A third axiom was, "Don't be a family man; nothing ages one like
matrimonial felicity and paternal ties. Never multiply cares, and
pack up your life in the briefest compass you can. Why add to your
carpet-bag of troubles the contents of a lady's imperials and
bonnet-boxes, and the travelling /fourgon/ required by the nursery?
Shun ambition: it is so gouty. It takes a great deal out of a man's
life, and gives him nothing worth having till he has ceased to enjoy
it." Another of his aphorisms was this, "A fresh mind keeps the body
fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday.
As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day."

Preserving himself by attention to these rules, Mr. Mivers appeared at
Exmundham /totus, teres/, but not /rotundus/,--a man of middle height,
slender, upright, with well-cut, small, slight features, thin lips,
enclosing an excellent set of teeth, even, white, and not indebted to
the dentist. For the sake of those teeth he shunned acid wines,
especially hock in all its varieties, culinary sweets, and hot drinks.
He drank even his tea cold.

"There are," he said, "two things in life that a sage must preserve at
every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach and the enamel of his teeth.
Some evils admit of consolations: there are no comforters for
dyspepsia and toothache." A man of letters, but a man of the world,
he had so cultivated his mind as both that he was feared as the one
and liked as the other. As a man of letters he despised the world; as
a man of the world he despised letters. As the representative of both
he revered himself.