it is of little good to
have your house doors open. For men desire not only to have promises
made them, especially in their applications to a candidate, but to have
them made in a liberal and complimentary manner. Accordingly, it is an
easy rule to make, that you should indicate that whatever you are going
to do you will do with heartiness and pleasure; it is somewhat more
difficult, and rather a concession to the necessities of the moment than
to your inclination, that when you cannot do a thing you should [either
promise] or put your refusal pleasantly: the latter is the conduct of a
good man, the former of a good candidate. For when a request is made
which we cannot grant with honour or without loss to ourselves, for
instance, if a man were to ask us to appear in a suit against a friend,
a refusal must be given in a gentlemanly way: you must point out to him
that your hands are tied, must shew that you are exceedingly sorry, must
convince him that you will make up for it in other ways.

XII. I have heard a man say about certain orators, to whom he had
offered his case, "that he had been better pleased with the words of the
one who declined, than of the one who accepted." So true it is that men
are more taken by look and words than by actual services. [This latter
course, however, you will readily approve: the former it is somewhat
difficult to recommend to a Platonist like you, but yet I will have
regard for your present circumstances.] For even those to whom you are
forced by any other tie to refuse your advocacy may yet quit you
mollified and with friendly feelings. But those to whom you only excuse
a refusal by saying that you are hindered by the affairs of closer
friends, or by cases more important or previously undertaken, quit you
with hostile feelings, and are one and all disposed to prefer an
insincere promise to a direct negative from you. C. Cotta, a master in
the art of electioneering, used to say that, "so long as the request was
not directly contrary to moral duty, he used to promise his assistance
to all, to bestow it on those with whom he thought it would be most
advantageously invested: he did not refuse anyone, because something
often turned up to prevent the person whom he promised from availing
himself of it, and it often also occurred that he himself was less
engaged than he had thought at the time; nor could anyone's house be
full of suitors who only undertook what he saw his way to perform: by