There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin.
Such a one then lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an elderly man,
with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name
was Samuel Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopt one day
at my door, and asked me if I was the young man who had lately
opened a new printing-house. Being answered in the affirmative,
he said he was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking,
and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place,
the people already half-bankrupts, or near being so; all appearances
to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents,
being to his certain knowledge fallacious; for they were, in fact,
among the things that would soon ruin us. And he gave me such
a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were soon to exist,
that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I
engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it.
This man continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim
in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there,
because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure
of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought
it for when he first began his croaking.
I should have mentioned before, that, in the autumn of the preceding year,
I had form'd most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club of mutual
improvement, which we called the JUNTO; we met on Friday evenings.
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