their cures, fall nine times in ten upon the lungs. This argument, I am
sure, ought to have weight with you: for I protest to you, that if you
meet with any such accident, I would not give one year's purchase for
your life. Lastly, there is another sort of expense that I will not
allow, only because it is a silly one; I mean the fooling away your money
in baubles at toy shops. Have one handsome snuff-box (if you take snuff),
and one handsome sword; but then no more pretty and very useless things.

By what goes before, you will easily perceive that I mean to allow you
whatever is necessary, not only for the figure, but for the pleasures of
a gentleman, and not to supply the profusion of a rake. This, you must
confess, does not savor of either the severity or parsimony of old age. I
consider this agreement between us, as a subsidiary treaty on my part,
for services to be performed on yours. I promise you, that I will be as
punctual in the payment of the subsidies, as England has been during the
last war; but then I give you notice at the same time, that I require a
much more scrupulous execution of the treaty on your part, than we met
with on that of our allies; or else that payment will be stopped. I hope
all that I have now said was absolutely unnecessary, and that sentiments
more worthy and more noble than pecuniary ones, would of themselves have
pointed out to you the conduct I recommend; but, at all events, I
resolved to be once for all explicit with you, that, in the worst that
can happen, you may not plead ignorance, and complain that I had not
sufficiently explained to you my intentions.

Having mentioned the word rake, I must say a word or two more on that
subject, because young people too frequently, and always fatally, are apt
to mistake that character for that of a man of pleasure; whereas, there
are not in the world two characters more different. A rake is a
composition of all the lowest, most ignoble, degrading, and shameful
vices; they all conspire to disgrace his character, and to ruin his
fortune; while wine and the p-------s contend which shall soonest and
most effectually destroy his constitution. A dissolute, flagitious
footman, or porter, makes full as good a rake as a man of the first
quality. By the bye, let me tell you, that in the wildest part of my
youth, I never was a rake, but, on the contrary, always detested and
despised that character.

A man of pleasure, though not always so scrupulous as