d, he may be said to have served not himself, but
his master--and both his money and his seven years are all thrown away.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] [Individuals dealt with.]

[7] [It would be hard to doubt that Defore was sincere in this pleading
of the rights of the apprentice; but its morality is certainly far from
clear. The master may have gained customers with difficulty, by the
exercise of much ingenuity, patience, and industry, or through some
peculiar merit of his own. Indeed, it is always to be presumed that a
tradesman's customers are attached to him from some of these causes. Of
course, it would be hard if his apprentices, instead of collecting
customers for themselves by the same means, seduced away those of his
master. The true and direct object of an apprenticeship is to acquire a
trade, not to acquire customers.]

CHAPTER II

THE TRADESMAN'S WRITING LETTERS

As plainness, and a free unconstrained way of speaking, is the beauty
and excellence of speech, so an easy free concise way of writing is the
best style for a tradesman. He that affects a rumbling and bombast
style, and fills his letters with long harangues, compliments, and
flourishes, should turn poet instead of tradesman, and set up for a wit,
not a shopkeeper. Hark how such a young tradesman writes, out of the
country, to his wholesale-man in London, upon his first setting up.

'SIR--The destinies having so appointed it, and my dark stars
concurring, that I, who by nature was framed for better things, should
be put out to a trade, and the gods having been so propitious to me in
the time of my servitude, that at length the days are expired, and I am
launched forth into the great ocean of business, I thought fit to
acquaint you, that last month I received my fortune, which, by my
father's will, had been my due two years past, at which time I arrived
to man's estate, and became major, whereupon I have taken a house in one
of the principal streets of the town of----, where I am entered upon my
business, and hereby let you know that I shall have occasion for the
goods hereafter mentioned, which you may send to me by the carrier.'

This fine flourish, and which, no doubt, the young fellow dressed up
with much application, and thought was very well done, put his
correspondent in London into a fit of laughter, and instead of sending
him the goods he wrote for, put him either first upon writing down into
the country to inquire after his character,