Will. Now you are too strict again, master; as you last night declared, that in our business you would not have us always praying, so I hope that in our pleasure you would not have us always psalm-singing. I hope you would not have all one's singing to be about good things.
Stock. Not so, Will; but I would not have any part either of our business or our pleasure to be about evil things. It is one thing to be singing about religion, it is another thing to be singing against it. Saint Peter, I fancy, would not much have approved your favorite song. He, at least seemed to have another view of the matter, when he said, The end of all things is at hand. Now this text teaches much the same awful truth with the first line of your song. But let us see to what different purposes the apostle and the poet turn the very same thought. Your song says, because life is so short, let us make it merry. Let us divert ourselves so much on the road, that we may forget the end. Now what says the apostle, Because the end of all things is at hand be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer.
Will. Why, master, I like to be sober too, and have left off drinking. But still I never thought that we were obliged to carry texts out of the Bible to try the soundness of a song; and to enable us to judge if we might be both merry and wise in singing it.
Stock. Providence has not so stinted our enjoyments, Will, but he has left us many subjects of harmless merriment; but, for my own part, I am never certain that any one is quite harmless till I have tried it by this rule that you seem to think so strict. There is another favorite catch which I heard you and some of the workmen humming yesterday.
Will. I will prove to you that there is not a word of harm in that; pray listen now. (sings.)
"Which is the best day to drink—Sunday, Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday?"
Stock. Now, Will, do you really find you unwillingness to drink is so great that you stand in need of all these incentives to provoke you to it? Do you not find temptation strong enough without exciting your inclinations, and whetting your appetites in this manner? Can any thing be more unchristian than to persuade youth by pleasant words, set to the most alluring music, that the pleasures of drinking are so great, that every day in the week, naming them all successively, by way of fixing and enlarging the idea, is equally fit, equally proper, and equally delightful, for what?—for the low and sensual purpose of getting drunk. Tell me, Will, are you so very averse to pleasure? Are you naturally so cold and dead to all passion and temptation, that you really find it necessary to inflame your imagination, and disorder your senses, in order to excite a quicker relish for the pleasure of sin?
Will. All this is true enough, indeed; but I never saw it in this light before.
Stock. As I passed by the Grayhound last night, in my way to my evening's walk in the fields, I caught this one verse of a song which the club were singing:
"Bring the flask, the music bring,
Joy shall quickly find us;
Drink, and dance, and laugh, and sing,
And cast dull care behind us."