Well, Scholar, having now taught you to paint your rod, and we having
still a mile to Tottenham High-Cross, I will, as we walk towards it in
the cool shade of this sweet honeysuckle hedge, mention to you some of
the thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we two met
together. And these thoughts shall be told you, that you also may join
with me in thankfulness to the Giver of every good and perfect gift, for
our happiness. And that our present happiness may appear to be the
greater, and we the more thankful for it, I will beg you to consider
with me how many do, even at this very time, lie under the torment of
the stone, the gout, and tooth-ache; and this we are free from. And
every misery that I miss is a new mercy; and therefore let us be
thankful. There have been, since we met, others that have met disasters
or broken limbs; some have been blasted, others thunder-strucken: and we
have been freed from these, and all those many other miseries that
threaten human nature; let us therefore rejoice and be thankful. Nay,
which is a far greater mercy, we are free from the insupportable burthen
of an accusing tormenting conscience; a misery that none can bear: and
therefore let us praise Him for His preventing grace, and say, Every
misery that I miss is a new mercy. Nay, let me tell you, there be many
that have forty times our estates, that would give the greatest part of
it to be healthful and cheerful like us, who, with the expense of a
little money, have eat and drunk, and laughed, and angled, and sung, and
slept securely; and rose next day and cast away care, and sung, and
laughed, and angled again; which are blessings rich men cannot purchase
with all their money. Let me tell you, Scholar, I have a rich neighbour
that is always so busy that he has no leisure to laugh; the whole
business of his life is to get money, and more money, that he may still
get more and more money; he is still drudging on, and says, that Solomon
says "The diligent hand maketh rich"; and it is true indeed: but he
considers not that it is not in the power of riches to make a man happy;
for it was wisely said, by a man of great observation, "that there be as
many miseries beyond riches as on this side of them ". And yet God
deliver us from pinching poverty; and grant, that having a competency,
we may be content and thankful. Let not us repine, or so much as think
the gifts of God unequally dealt, if we see another abound with riches;
when, as God knows, the cares that are the keys that keep those riches
hang often so heavily at the rich man's girdle, that they clog him with
weary days and restless nights, even when others sleep quietly. We see
but the outside of the rich man's happiness: few consider him to be like
the silk-worm, that, when she seems to play, is, at the very same time,
spinning her own bowels, and consuming herself; and this many rich men
do, loading themselves with corroding cares, to keep what they have,
probably, unconscionably got.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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