I was even absurd enough, for a little while, to swear, by way of adorning and completing the shining character which I affected; but this folly I soon laid aside, upon finding berth the guilt and the indecency of it.

Thus seduced by fashion, and blindly adopting nominal pleasures, I lost real ones; and my fortune impaired, and my constitution shattered, are, I must confess, the just punishment of my errors.

Take warning then by them:  choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you.  Follow nature and not fashion:  weigh the present enjoyment of your pleasures against the necessary consequences of them, and then let your own common sense determine your choice.

Were I to begin the world again, with the experience which I now have of it, I would lead a life of real, not of imaginary pleasures.  I would enjoy the pleasures of the table, and of wine; but stop short of the pains inseparably annexed to an excess of either.  I would not, at twenty years, be a preaching missionary of abstemiousness and sobriety; and I should let other people do as they would, without formally and sententiously rebuking them for it; but I would be most firmly resolved not to destroy my own faculties and constitution; in complaisance to those who have no regard to their own.  I would play to give me pleasure, but not to give me pain; that is, I would play for trifles, in mixed companies, to amuse myself, and conform to custom; but I would take care not to venture for sums; which, if I won, I should not be the better for; but, if I lost, should be under a difficulty to pay:  and when paid, would oblige me to retrench in several other articles.  Not to mention the quarrels which deep play commonly occasions.

I would pass some of my time in reading, and the rest in the company of people of sense and learning, and chiefly those above me; and I would frequent the mixed companies of men and women of fashion, which, though often frivolous, yet they unbend and refresh the mind, not uselessly, because they certainly polish and soften the manners.

These would be my pleasures and amusements, if I were to live the last thirty years over again; they are rational ones; and, moreover, I will tell you, they are really the fashionable ones; for the others are not, in truth, the pleasures of what I call people of fashion, but of those who only call themselves so.  Does good company care to have a man reeling drunk among them?  Or to see another tearing his hair, and blaspheming, for having lost, at play, more than he is able to pay?  Or a whoremaster with half a nose, and crippled by coarse and infamous debauchery?  No; those who practice, and much more those who brag of them, make no part of good company; and are most unwillingly, if ever, admitted into it.  A real man of fashion and pleasures observes decency:  at least neither borrows nor affects vices:  and if he unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy, and secrecy.