, for fifty years, Mr. Brockden,
the scrivener, said to us, "You are young men, but it is scarcely
probable that any of you will live to see the expiration of the term
fix'd in the instrument." A number of us, however, are yet living;
but the instrument was after a few years rendered null by a charter
that incorporated and gave perpetuity to the company.
The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions,
made me soon feel the impropriety of presenting one's self as the
proposer of any useful project, that might be suppos'd to raise one's
reputation in the smallest degree above that of one's neighbors,
when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project.
I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight, and stated
it as a scheme of a number of friends, who had requested me to go
about and propose it to such as they thought lovers of reading.
In this way my affair went on more smoothly, and I ever after
practis'd it on such occasions; and, from my frequent successes,
can heartily recommend it. The present little sacrifice of your
vanity will afterwards be amply repaid. If it remains a while
uncertain to whom the merit belongs, some one more vain than
yourself will be encouraged to claim it, and then even envy will
be disposed to do you justice by plucking those assumed feathers,
and restoring them to their right owner.
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