e their constant attendance. As to see a
barber abroad on a Saturday, a corn-factor abroad on a Wednesday and
Friday, or a Blackwell-hall man on a Thursday, you may as well say a
country shopkeeper should go a-hunting on a market-day, or go a-feasting
at the fair day of the town where he lives; and yet riding and hunting
are otherwise lawful diversions, and in their kind very good for
exercise and health.

I am not for making a galley-slave of a shopkeeper, and have him chained
down to the oar; but if he be a wise, a prudent, and a diligent
tradesman, he will allow himself as few excursions as possible.

Business neglected is business lost; it is true, there are some
businesses which require less attendance than others, and give a man
less occasion of application; but, in general, that tradesman who can
satisfy himself to be absent from his business, must not expect success;
if he is above the character of a diligent tradesman, he must then be
above the business too, and should leave it to somebody, that, having
more need of it, will think it worth his while to mind it better.

Nor, indeed, is it possible a tradesman should be master of any of the
qualifications which I have set down to denominate him complete, if he
neglects his shop and his time, following his pleasures and diversions.

I will allow that the man is not vicious and wicked, that he is not
addicted to drunkenness, to women, to gaming, or any such things as
those, for those are not woundings, but murder, downright killing. A man
may wound and hurt himself sometimes, in the rage of an ungoverned
passion, or in a phrensy or fever, and intend no more; but if he shoots
himself through the head, or hangs himself, we are sure then he intended
to kill and destroy himself, and he dies inevitably.

For a tradesman to follow his pleasures, which indeed is generally
attended with a slighting of his business, leaving his shop to servants
or others, it is evident to me that he is indifferent whether it thrives
or no; and, above all, it is evident that his heart is not in his
business; that he does not delight in it, or look on it with pleasure.
To a complete tradesman there is no pleasure equal to that of being in
his business, no delight equal to that of seeing himself thrive, to see
trade flow in upon him, and to be satisfied that he goes on
prosperously. He will never thrive, that cares not whether he thrives or
no. As trade is the chief employment of his life,