feel as if he were _obliged_ to purchase. The
medium of an easy, obliging, and good-humoured manner, is perhaps what
suits best. But here, as in many other things, it is not easy to lay
down any general rule. Much must be left to the goos sense and _tact_ of
the trader.]

CHAPTER IX

OF OTHER REASONS FOR THE TRADESMAN'S DISASTERS: AND, FIRST, OF INNOCENT
DIVERSIONS

A few directions seasonably given, and wisely received, will be
sufficient to guide a tradesman in a right management of his business,
so as that, if he observes them, he may secure his prosperity and
success: but it requires a long and serious caveat to warn him of the
dangers he meets with in his way. Trade is a straight and direct way, if
they will but keep in it with a steady foot, and not wander, and launch
out here and there, as a loose head and giddy fancy will prompt them to
do.

The road, I say, is straight and direct; but there are many turnings and
openings in it, both to the right hand and to the left, in which, if a
tradesman but once ventures to step awry, it is ten thousand to one but
he loses himself, and very rarely finds his way back again; at least if
he does, it is like a man that has been lost in a wood; he comes out
with a scratched face, and torn clothes, tired and spent, and does not
recover himself in a long while after.

In a word, one steady motion carries him up, but many things assist to
pull him down; there are many ways open to his ruin, but few to his
rising: and though employment is said to be the best fence against
temptations, and he that is busy heartily in his business, temptations
to idleness and negligence will not be so busy about him, yet tradesmen
are as often drawn from their business as other men; and when they are
so, it is more fatal to them a great deal, than it is to gentlemen and
persons whose employments do not call for their personal attendance so
much as a shop does.

Among the many turnings and bye-lanes, which, as I say, are to be met
with in the straight road of trade, there are two as dangerous and fatal
to their prosperity as the worst, though they both carry an appearance
of good, and promise contrary to what they perform; these are--

I. Pleasures and diversions, especially such as they will have us call
innocent diversions.

II. Projects and adventures, and especially such as promise mountains of
profit _in nubibus_ [in the clouds], and are therefore the more likely
to ensnare the