This, too, is a very important point to attend to, knowledge of how to converse, to interrogate without overearnestness, to answer without desire of display, not to interrupt a profitible speaker, or to desire ambitiously to put in a word of one's own. To be measured in speaking and hearing, not to be ashamed of receiving or to be grudging in giving information, nor to pass another's knowledge for one's own, as depraved women and superstitious children, but to refer candidly to the true parent. The middle tone of voice is best, neither so low as to be inaudible, nor to be ill bred from its high pitch. One should reflect first what one is going to say,, and then give it utterance. Be courteous when addressed, amiable in intercourse, not aiming to be pleasant by facetiousness, but cultivating gentleness in kind admonitions.
Harshness is ever to be put aside, even in censuring.
The more your show modesty and humility in yourself, the more likely you are to be acceptable to the patient who needs your treatment. There are, however, many occasions when we shall do well to employ the kind of rebuke used by the prophet who did not in his own person utter the sentence of condemnation on David after his sin, but by suggesting an imaginary character made the sinner judge of his own sin, so that, after passing his own sentence, he could not find fault with the seer who had convicted him. From the humble, submissive spirit comes an eye sorrowful and downcast, appearance neglected, hair rough, dress dirty, so that the appearance which mourners take pains to present may appear our natural condition. The tunic should be fastened to the body by a girdle, the belt not going above the flank, like a woman's, nor left slack, so that the tunic flows slack like an idler's. The gait ought not to be sluggish, which shows a character without energy, nor on the other hand pushing and pompous, as though our impulses were rash and wild.