considered drinking as a necessary qualification for a fine gentleman,
and a man of pleasure.

The same as to gaming. I did not want money, and consequently had no
occasion to play for it; but I thought play another necessary ingredient
in the composition of a man of pleasure, and accordingly I plunged into
it without desire, at first; sacrificed a thousand real pleasures to it;
and made myself solidly uneasy by it, for thirty the best years of my
life.

I was even absurd enough, for a little while, to swear, by way of
adorning and completing the shining character which I affected; but this
folly I soon laid aside, upon finding berth the guilt and the indecency
of it.

Thus seduced by fashion, and blindly adopting nominal pleasures, I lost
real ones; and my fortune impaired, and my constitution shattered, are, I
must confess, the just punishment of my errors.

Take warning then by them: choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not
let them be imposed upon you. Follow nature and not fashion: weigh the
present enjoyment of your pleasures against the necessary consequences of
them, and then let your own common sense determine your choice.

Were I to begin the world again, with the experience which I now have of
it, I would lead a life of real, not of imaginary pleasures. I would
enjoy the pleasures of the table, and of wine; but stop short of the
pains inseparably annexed to an excess of either. I would not, at twenty
years, be a preaching missionary of abstemiousness and sobriety; and I
should let other people do as they would, without formally and