Part 10

Stop before holding your wife accountable for every little smile or frankness accorded to her antenuptial admirers. ’Tis the watched fire that languishes; and, should she meditate treason, she would not hint it by so much as a rush-light.

Stop before letting her know it, if you find out that your marriage has been a mistake. Doubtless this will make itself felt, despite your utmost precautions, and her sufferings in making the sad discovery will then challenge your compunction, your pity and your redoubled devotion, if you are a true man.

Stop before laughing at piety in your wife, even if an infidel yourself. “Wise men like to have pious wives,” says Emerson, “and it is well for all concerned that it should be so.”

Stop before betraying your weaknesses to your children. Even a hypocritical assumption of a morality that you do not always practice is preferable to self-exposure in this regard.

Stop before correcting them in the presence of outsiders. The self-respect of a little child, once wounded to the quick, is long in healing; and some consideration is due, moreover, to the outsiders.

Stop before punishing a child when influenced by anger. The punishment then ceases to be corrective, and is only resentful; whereas the helplessness of the child should of itself evoke but magnanimity.

Stop, when thus impelled by anger, and reflect if you would as readily seek to gratify it, were no such disparity existent--that is, where the child as big and powerful as yourself.

Stop before threatening a chastisement that you don’t intend to inflict. Or, if you must persist in this course, don’t ascribe the continued disobedience, which is its inevitable outgrowth, to anything but your own weakness.

Stop short of deception or untruth in your dealings with your children, if you would impress them with the opposite sentiments.

Stop, in this regard, and reflect that, if the childish mind is wax to early impressions, it is of a kind that hardens with the imprint, and that from the hardening process spring the imitation and the emulation, which must gradually corrupt or ennoble, as the case may be.

Stop before assuming a bullying tone or attitude toward your family or your domestics. Vaporings of this description are always in wretched taste, and a home-circle that must needs be terrorized is little to be envied.

Stop before living beyond, or even quite up to your means, and be not ambitious to make an outside show at the expense of internal comfort.

Stop short of lessening the significance of old-time festivities, such as Thanksgiving Day, Christmas, New Year’s and birth-day observances, simply because you have yourself outgrown their zest.

Stop before repressing any innocent propensity to gush on the part of your wife or children. It is a chill home-fountain that will not occasionally overflow.

Stop, if possible, before ever disturbing your family peace with even so much as an unkind or hasty word. The pretty lines,

“We have greeting words for the stranger, And smiles for the sometime guest, But oft for Our Own the bitter tone. Though we love Our Own the best,”

should never be pertinent in a wise man’s household.

Stop before assuming an oracular or infallible attitude--in other words, setting yourself up as a small god--before your own family. Ten to one, it is an assumption that you cannot maintain with any degree of consistency, and one which may entail a humiliating back-down when least expected.

In Business Life.

Stop short of attempting a business enterprise wholly beyond your mental and financial equipment. To attempt the rôle of a railroad magnate, for instance, when you have the soul of a licensed fish-vender, or the manipulation of a government loan with hardly enough capital for a fruit-stand, would be more ambitious than wise.

Stop before adopting rigorous and unbending methods that, under a change of fortune, can be quoted against you to your disadvantage. Thus, to never lend money, on principle, when prosperous, but be perfectly willing to borrow it when broke, might subject you to unpleasant comment.

Stop before assuming a domineering, Jovian tone toward those with less money than you, even if you have a corner on the market. Men are often like rats in this, that they fight when they are cornered.

Stop when already so deep into a hopeless speculation that you can’t beg or borrow another cent, when certain ruin stares you in the face, and even your pawn-tickets are at a discount. Forlorn hopes are only practicable in serial stories and war.

Stop, even at the height of prosperity, and make sure of the future by settling upon your family a competence that shall thenceforth forever be secured to them, come what may. This prudent course, feasible and honorable during prosperity, would be just the reverse if deferred until after business disaster may have come.

Stop short of imagining that there is any more luck in a legitimate business than in games of chance--in other words, that there is any at all. Or, if there is any, it consists of superior energy, foresight, shrewdness and application, wherein, of course, the stronger wins while the weaker goes to the wall.

Stop, and reflect well, before venturing outside of a legitimate, fairly-paying business upon the sea of speculation, which is in reality but gambling under another name.

Stop before cultivating a reputation for either over-credulity or relentless hard bargaining in business life. The one will be abused, while the other will foster enmities through the abuse it practices.

Stop short of uncompromising martinetism toward your employees. Our clerks, for instance, can no longer be treated as apprentices; many of them are rich men in embryo; and with what satisfaction and gratitude do powerful millionaires often recall slight kindnesses and encouragements received from their employers when they were nothing but obscure clerks or office-boys!