urself, 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 t