“停一停，孩子，我只买一双！”“我知道，”他说，“但我想让您瞧瞧这些袜子是多么漂亮？令人赞叹！难道它们不棒吗！”他的脸色庄严而虔诚，就像是在向我透露他的信仰中的奥秘似的。我对他远远超过了对袜子的兴趣。我吃惊地打量着他。“我的朋友，”我说，“如果你能这样保持下去，如果这热情并不仅仅缘于新奇，缘于找到份新工作，如果你能日复一日地保持这种热心和激情，不出十年，全美的每一双袜子都将是从你手中卖出去的。”
我对他推销时的自豪与欣喜所感到的诧异，读者诸君当不难理解。在很多店铺，顾客不得不等待有人来招呼。当终于有个售货员肯屈尊理你，那样子又让你感觉像是打扰了他。他不是陷于讨厌被人搅扰的深思之中，就是和女售货员嬉戏调笑；而你不适时的插入打断了他们的亲昵，为此你感觉好像需要道歉似的。
他显示出对你和他拿着工资去卖的东西毫无兴趣。然而，就是这样一个如此冷漠的售货员，或许当初也是满怀希望和热情开始工作的。天天枯燥乏味的苦差事令他不堪忍受，新鲜感磨去了，惟一的乐趣只能在工作之外找到。他成了一个机械的、没有干劲的售货员。机械呆板之后便是笨拙无能。随后，看到比他年轻、工作热情比他高的售货员得到了提拔，在他之上，他于是变得烦躁刻薄。此时便到了他职业生涯的最后阶段。他不再有用了。
我观察到，很多职业中的太多人在人生道路上都有这种可悲的堕落。由此我得出结论：机械地应付差事是离失败最近的路。大中小学里的许多教师，似乎比他们最最迟钝的学生还要呆滞；他们似乎也搞搞教学，却毫无人的感情，就如同一部电话机。
Of Friendship论友谊
It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words, than in that speech, Whatsoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god. For it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred, and aversation towards society, in any man, has somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue, that it should have any character at all, of the divine nature; except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man’s self, for a higher conversation: such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen; as Epimenides the Canadian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly and really, in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extends. For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin adage meets with it a little: Magna civitas, magna solitude; because in a great town friends are scattered; so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he takes it of the beast, and not from humanity.
A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings, and suffocations, are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind; you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt opens the heart, but a true friend; to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lies upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.
It is a strange thing to observe, how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship, whereof we speak: so great, as they purchase it, many times, at the hazard of their own safety and greatness. For princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit, except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to be, as it were, companions and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorts to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favorites, or privates; as if it were matter of grace, or conversation. But the Roman name attains the true use and cause thereof, naming them participes curarum; for it is that which ties the knot. And we see plainly that this has been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned; who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants; whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed other likewise to call them in the same manner; using the word which is received between private men.