In short, pleasure is a thief to business; how any man can call it innocent, let him answer that does so; it robs him every way, as I have said above:  and if the tradesman be a Christian, and has any regard to religion and his duty, I must tell him, that when upon his disasters he shall reflect, and see that he has ruined himself and his family, by following too much those diversions and pleasures which he thought innocent, and which perhaps in themselves were really so, he will find great cause to repent of that which he insisted on as innocent; he will find himself lost, by doing lawful things, and that he made those innocent things sinful, and those lawful things unlawful to him.  Thus, as they robbed his family and creditors before of their just debts—­for maintenance is a tradesman’s just debt to his family, and a wife and children are as much a tradesman’s real creditors as those who trusted him with their goods—­I say, as his innocent pleasures robbed his family and creditors before, they will rob him now of his peace, and of all that calm of soul which an honest, industrious, though unfortunate, tradesman meets with under his disasters.

I am asked here, perhaps, how much pleasure an honest-meaning tradesman may be allowed to take? for it cannot be supposed I should insist that all pleasure is forbidden him, that he must have no diversion, no spare hours, no intervals from hurry and fatigue; that would be to pin him down to the very floor of his shop, as John Sheppard was locked down to the floor of his prison.

The answer to this question every prudent tradesman may make for himself:  if his pleasure is in his shop, and in his business, there is no danger of him; but if he has an itch after exotic diversions—­I mean such as are foreign to his shop, and to his business, and which I therefore call exotic—­let him honestly and fairly state the case between his shop and his diversions, and judge impartially for himself.  So much pleasure, and no more, may be innocently taken, as does not interfere with, or do the least damage to his business, by taking him away from it.

Every moment that his trade wants him in his shop or warehouse, it is his duty to be there; it is not enough to say, I believe I shall not be wanted; or I believe I shall suffer no loss by my absence.  He must come to a point and not deceive himself; if he does, the cheat is all his own.  If he will not judge sincerely at first, he will reproach himself sincerely at last; for there is no fraud against his own reflections:  a man is very rarely a hypocrite to himself.

The rule may be, in a few words, thus:  those pleasures or diversions, and those only, can be innocent, which the man may or does use, or allow himself to use, without hindrance of, or injury to, his business and reputation.