FOOTNOTES: 

[18] [In the above admirable series of plain-spoken advices, the author has omitted one weighty reason why young tradesmen should not spend their evenings in frivolous, or otherwise improper company.  The actual loss of time and of money incurred by such courses of conduct, is generally of less consequence than the losses arising from habitual distraction of mind, and the acquisition of an acquaintanceship with a set of idle or silly companions.  It is of the utmost importance that young tradesmen should spend their leisure hours in a way calculated to soothe the feelings, and enlarge the mind; and in the present day, from the prevalance of literature, and other rational means for amusement, they have ample opportunities of doing so.]

CHAPTER X

OF EXTRAVAGANT AND EXPENSIVE LIVING; ANOTHER STEP TO A TRADESMAN’S DISASTER

Hitherto I have written of tradesmen ruined by lawful and innocent diversions; and, indeed, these are some of the most dangerous pits for a tradesman to fall into, because men are so apt to be insensible of the danger:  a ship may as well be lost in a calm smooth sea, and an easy fair gale of wind, as in a storm, if they have no pilot, or the pilot be ignorant or unwary; and disasters of that nature happen as frequently as any others, and are as fatal.  When rocks are apparent, and the pilot, bold and wilful, runs directly upon them, without fear or wit, we know the fate of the ship—­it must perish, and all that are in it will inevitably be lost; but in a smooth sea, a bold shore, an easy gale, the unseen rocks or shoals are the only dangers, and nothing can hazard them but the skilfulness of the pilot:  and thus it is in trade.  Open debaucheries and extravagances, and a profusion of expense, as well as a general contempt of business, these are open and current roads to a tradesman’s destruction; but a silent going on, in pursuit of innocent pleasures, a smooth and calm, but sure neglect of his shop, and time, and business, will as effectually and as surely ruin the tradesman as the other; and though the means are not so scandalous, the effect is as certain.  But I proceed to the other.

Next to immoderate pleasures, the tradesman ought to be warned against immoderate expense.  This is a terrible article, and more particularly so to the tradesman, as custom has now, as it were on purpose for their undoing, introduced a general habit of, and as it were a general inclination among all sorts of people to, an expensive way of living; to which might be added a kind of necessity of it; for that even with the greatest prudence and frugality a man cannot now support a family with the ordinary expense, which the same family might have been maintained with some few years ago:  there is now (1) a weight of taxes upon almost all the necessaries of life, bread and flesh excepted, as coals, salt, malt, candles, soap, leather, hops, wine, fruit, and all foreign consumptions; (2) a load of pride upon the temper of the nation, which, in spite of taxes and the unusual dearess of every thing, yet prompts people to a profusion in their expenses.