d, 'The diligent shall bear rule, but the slothful shall be under
tribute.'

Nothing can give a greater prospect of thriving to a young tradesman,
than his own diligence; it fills himself with hope, and gives him credit
with all who know him; without application, nothing in this world goes
forward as it should do: let the man have the most perfect knowledge of
his trade, and the best situation for his shop, yet without application
nothing will go on. What is the shop without the master? what the books
without the book-keeper? what the credit without the man? Hark how the
people talk of such conduct as the slothful negligent trader discovers
in his way.

'Such a shop,' says the customer, 'stands well, and there is a good
stock of goods in it, but there is nobody to serve but a 'prentice-boy
or two, and an idle journeyman: one finds them always at play together,
rather than looking out for customers; and when you come to buy, they
look as if they did not care whether they showed you any thing or no.
One never sees a master in the shop, if we go twenty times, nor anything
that bears the face of authority. Then, it is a shop always exposed, it
is perfectly haunted with thieves and shop-lifters; they see nobody but
raw boys in it, that mind nothing, and the diligent devils never fail to
haunt them, so that there are more outcries of 'Stop thief!' at their
door, and more constables fetched to that shop, than to all the shops in
the row. There was a brave trade at that shop in Mr--'s time: he was a
true shopkeeper; like the quack doctor, you never missed him from seven
in the morning till twelve, and from two till nine at night, and he
throve accordingly--he left a good estate behind him. But I don't know
what these people are; they say there are two partners of them, but
there had as good be none, for they are never at home, nor in their
shop: one wears a long wig and a sword, I hear, and you see him often
in the Mall and at court, but very seldom in his shop, or waiting on his
customers; and the other, they say, lies a-bed till eleven o'clock every
day, just comes into the shop and shows himself, then stalks about to
the tavern to take a whet, then to Child's coffee-house to hear the
news, comes home to dinner at one, takes a long sleep in his chair after
it, and about four o'clock comes into the shop for half an hour, or
thereabouts, then to the tavern, where he stays till two in the morning,
gets drunk, and is led home by