'Well, but now I add two sons and seven
daughters, and a servant for each, that will make twenty; so we have
the fifth part already.' JOHNSON. 'Very true. You get at twenty pretty
readily; but you will not so easily get further on. We grow to five feet
pretty readily; but it is not so easy to grow to seven.'
On Monday, April 20, I found him at home in the morning. We talked of a
gentleman who we apprehended was gradually involving his circumstances
by bad management. JOHNSON. 'Wasting a fortune is evaporation by a
thousand imperceptible means. If it were a stream, they'd stop it. You
must speak to him. It is really miserable. Were he a gamester, it could
be said he had hopes of winning. Were he a bankrupt in trade, he might
have grown rich; but he has neither spirit to spend nor resolution to
spare. He does not spend fast enough to have pleasure from it. He has
the crime of prodigality, and the wretchedness of parsimony. If a man is
killed in a duel, he is killed as many a one has been killed; but it is
a sad thing for a man to lie down and die; to bleed to death, because he
has not fortitude enough to sear the wound, or even to stitch it up.
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