e. This demands a knack of remembering names,
insinuating manners, constant attendance, liberality, the power of
setting a report afloat and creating a hopeful feeling in the state.
First of all, make the faculty you possess of recognizing people
conspicuous, and go on increasing and improving it every day. I don't
think there is anything so popular or so conciliatory. Next, if nature
has denied you some quality, resolve to assume it, so as to appear to be
acting naturally. Although nature has great force, yet in a business
lasting only a few months it seems probable that the artificial may be
the more effective. For though you are not lacking in the courtesy which
good and polite men should have, yet there is great need of a flattering
manner which, however faulty and discreditable in other transactions of
life, is yet necessary during a candidateship. For when it makes a man
worse by truckling, it is wrong; but when only more friendly, it does
not deserve so harsh a term; while it is absolutely necessary to a
candidate, whose face and expression and style of conversation have to
be varied and accommodated to the feelings and tastes of everyone he
meets. As for "constant attendance," there is no need of laying down any
rule, the phrase speaks for itself. It is, of course, of very great
consequence not to go away anywhere; but the real advantage of such
constant attendance is not only the being at Rome and in the forum, but
the pushing one's canvass assiduously, the addressing oneself again and
again to the same persons, the making it impossible (as far as your
power goes) for anyone to say that he has not been asked by you, and
earnestly and carefully asked. Liberality is, again, of wide
application; it is shewn in regard to the management of your private
property, which, even if it does not actually reach the multitude, yet,
if spoken of with praise by friends, earns the favour of the multitude.
It may also be displayed in banquets, which you must take care to attend
yourself and to cause your friends to attend, whether open ones or those
confined to particular tribes. It may, again, be displayed in giving
practical assistance, which I would have you render available far and
wide: and be careful therein to be accessible to all by day and night,
and not only by the doors of your house, but by your face and
countenance, which is the door of the mind; for, if that shews your
feelings to be those of reserve and concealment,