The Connoisseur 15 (1754) [ Practices ]
… so that the only genteel method of dissent is to risk a thousand pounds, or take your chance of being run through the body. The strange custom of deciding every thing by a wager is so universal, that if (in imitation of Swift ) any body was to publish a specimen of Polite Converfation , instead of old sayings and trite repartees he would in all …
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