XIX The Affable Man

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Affability is a sort of demeanor that gives pleasure at the sacrifice of what is best. The affable man is the kind of person who hails a friend at a distance, and after he has told him what a fine fellow he is, and has lavished brimming admiration on him, seizes both his hands, and is unwilling to let him go. He escorts the friend a step on his way, and as he asks “When shall we meet again?” tears himself away with praises still falling from his lips.

When summoned to court he wishes to please not merely the man in whose interest he appears, but his adversary too, that he may seem to be non-partisan; and of strangers he says that they pronounce juster judgment than his townsmen. If he’s invited out to dinner he asks his host to call in the children, and when they come, he declares they’re as like their father as one fig is like another, and he draws them toward him, kisses them, and sets them by his side. Sometimes he joins in their sports, shouting “Strike!” and “Foul!”; and sometimes he lets them go to sleep in his lap in spite of the burden.[28]

[28] The remainder of the Greek text of this character has been thought to belong more properly with “The Exquisite,” No. XV.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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