Yet who is there does not
sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour? All assemblies of
jollity, all places of public entertainment, exhibit examples of
strength wasting in riot, and beauty withering in irregularity; nor is
it easy to enter a house in which part of the family is not groaning in
repentance of past intemperance, and part admitting disease by
negligence, or soliciting it by luxury.
There is no pleasure which men of every age and sect have more generally
agreed to mention with contempt, than the gratifications of the palate;
an entertainment so far removed from intellectual happiness, that
scarcely the most shameless of the sensual herd have dared to defend it:
yet even to this, the lowest of our delights, to this, though neither
quick nor lasting, is health with all its activity and sprightliness
daily sacrificed; and for this are half the miseries endured which urge
impatience to call on death.
The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and the dread of
poverty. Who, then, would not imagine that such conduct as will
inevitably destroy what all are thus labouring to acquire, must
generally be avoided? That he who spends more than he receives, must in
time become indigent, cannot be doubted; but, how evident soever this
consequence may appear, the spendthrift moves in the whirl of pleasure
with too much rapidity to keep it before his eyes, and, in the
intoxication of gaiety, grows every day poorer without any such sense of
approaching ruin as is sufficient to wake him into caution.
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