[17] [It appears to the editor that the case is here somewhat over-stated.  While imperterbable good temper and civility are indispensible in the shopkeeper, it is not impossible that he may also err in displaying a too great obsequiousness of manner.  This, by disgusting the common sense and good taste of customers, may do as much harm as want of civility.  A too pressing manner, likewise, does harm, by causing the customer to 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 poor eager avaricious tradesman.