ngs which we must do. Pleasures at
certain seasons are allowed, and we may give ourselves some loose to
them; but business, I mean to the man of business, is that needful
thing, of which it is not to be said it _may_, but it _must_ be done.

Again, those pleasures which may not only be lawful in themselves, but
which may be lawful to other men, yet are criminal and unlawful to him.
To gentlemen of fortunes and estates, who being born to large
possessions, and have no avocations of this kind, it is certainly lawful
to spend their spare hours on horseback, with their hounds or hawks,
pursuing their game; or, on foot, with their gun and their net, and
their dogs to kill the hares or birds, &c.--all which we call sport.
These are the men that can, with a particular satisfaction, when they
come home, say they have only taken an innocent diversion; and yet even
in these, there are not wanting some excesses which take away the
innocence of them, and consequently the satisfaction in their
reflection, and therefore it was I said it was lawful to them to spend
their spare hours--by which I am to be understood, those hours which are
not due to more solemn and weighty occasions, such as the duties of
religion in particular. But as this is not my present subject, I
proceed; for I am not talking to gentlemen now, but to tradesmen.

The prudent tradesman will, in time, consider what he ought or ought not
to do, in his own particular case, as to his pleasures--not what another
man may or may not do. In short, nothing of pleasure or diversion can be
innocent to him, whatever it may be to another, if it injures his
business, if it takes either his time, or his mind, or his delight, or
his attendance, from his business; nor can all the little excuses, of
its being for his health, and for the needful unbending the bow of the
mind, from the constant application of business, for all these must
stoop to the great article of his shop and business; though I might add,
that the bare taking the air for health, and for a recess to the mind,
is not the thing I am talking of--it is the taking an immoderate
liberty, and spending an immoderate length of time, and that at
unseasonable and improper hours, so as to make his pleasures and
diversions be prejudicial to his business--this is the evil I object to,
and this is too much the ruin of the tradesmen of this age; and thus any
man who calmly reads these papers will see I ought to be understood.

No