Read "The Complete English Tradesman" by Daniel Defoe online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It is the ordinary excuse of the gentlemen tradesmen of our times, that they have good servants, and that therefore they take more liberty to be out of their business, than they would otherwise do. 'Oh! ' says the shopkeeper, 'I have an apprentice -- it is an estate to have such a servant. I am as safe in him as if I had my eye upon the business from morning till night; let me be where I will, I am always satisfied he is at home; if I am at the tavern, I am sure he is in the counting-house, or behind the counter; he is never out of his post.
'And then for my other servants, the younger apprentices,' says he, 'it is all one as if I were there myself -- they would be idle it may be, but he won't let them, I assure you; they must stick close to it, or he will make them do it; he tells them, boys do not come apprentices to play, but to work; not to sit idle, and be doing nothing, but to mind their master's business, that they may learn how to do their own.'