The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle Though Peregrine, in his heart, detested those abandoned courses, and was a professed enemy to the whole society of gamesters, whom he considered, and always treated, as the foes of humankind, he was insensibly accustomed to licentious riot, and even led imperceptibly into play by those cormorants, who are no less dangerous in the art of cheating, than by their consummate skill in working up the passions of unwary youth. They are, for the most part, naturally cool, phlegmatic, and crafty, and, by a long habit of dissimulation, have gained an absolute dominion over the hasty passions of the heart; so that they engage with manifest advantage over the impatience and impetuosity of a warm undesigning temper, like that of our young gentleman, who, when he was heated with wine, misled by example, invited on one hand, and defied on the other, forgot all his maxims of caution and sobriety, and, plunging into the reigning folly of the place, had frequent occasions to moralize in the morning upon the loss of the preceding night. These penitential reflections were attended with many laudable resolutions of profiting by the experience which he had so dearly purchased; but he was one of those philosophers who always put off till another day the commencement of their reformation.