'Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest
man; but I call him an unsocial man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a
mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.
Trade gives employment to numbers, and so produces intermediate good.'
On Thursday, April 9, I called on him to beg he would go and dine with
me at the Mitre tavern. He had resolved not to dine at all this day, I
know not for what reason; and I was so unwilling to be deprived of his
company, that I was content to submit to suffer a want, which was at
first somewhat painful, but he soon made me forget it; and a man is
always pleased with himself when he finds his intellectual inclinations
predominate.
He observed, that to reason philosophically on the nature of prayer, was
very unprofitable.
Talking of ghosts, he said, he knew one friend, who was an honest man
and a sensible man, who told him he had seen a ghost, old Mr. Edward
Cave, the printer at St. John's Gate. He said, Mr. Cave did not like to
talk of it, and seemed to be in great horrour whenever it was mentioned.
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