In my father, I saw his gentle nature and his steady resolve. Once he had thought something through carefully, he stuck with it. He never showed off about his honors or titles. He worked hard and was always ready to listen to anyone who had something to say for the common good. He treated everyone fairly and knew when to be strict and when to show mercy. He stayed away from inappropriate relationships with young men. He was considerate of others' needs like any ordinary person. He never demanded that his friends join him for every meal or trip. And whenever he had to put off some business, when he returned to it later, he was the same steady person he had always been.
In my father, I observed his meekness; his constancy without wavering in those things, which after a due examination and deliberation, he had determined. How free from all vanity he carried himself in matter of honour and dignity, (as they are esteemed:) his laboriousness and assiduity, his readiness to hear any man, that had aught to say tending to any common good: how generally and impartially he would give every man his due; his skill and knowledge, when rigour or extremity, or when remissness or moderation was in season; how he did abstain from all unchaste love of youths; his moderate condescending to other men's occasions as an ordinary man, neither absolutely requiring of his friends, that they should wait upon him at his ordinary meals, nor that they should of necessity accompany him in his journeys; and that whensoever any business upon some necessary occasions was to be put off and omitted before it could be ended, he was ever found when he went about it again, the same man that he was before.