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.

Let the diversions or pleasures in question be what they will, and how
innocent soever they are in themselves, they are not so to him, because
they interrupt or interfere with his business, which is his immediate
duty. I have mentioned the circumstance which touches this part too,
namely, that there may be a time when even the needful duties of
religion may become faults, and unseasonable, when another more needful
attendance calls for us to apply to it; much more, then, those things
which are only barely lawful. There is a visible difference between the
things which we may do, and the thi