Part 7

Stop, and do nothing, rather than procrastinate indefinitely. Untrustworthiness is the final result of procrastination, and a reputation for that is tantamount to elimination from the world’s employment.

Stop far short of any indulgence that can affect your general reputation. “The two most precious things this side the grave,” says Lacon, “are our reputation and our life; the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, the weakest weapon of the other.”

Stop the use of tobacco, if addicted to it, but especially in the form of chewing, the vileness of this practice is in no wise mitigated by its prevalence.

Stop smoking, also, at its first threatened inroad upon the general health. To persist in it thereafter is a confession of both moral and mental weakness.

Stop on the threshold of gambling of every description, and, if already in the toils, shut down on the practice with all the ponderosity at your command.

Stop, moreover, and understand that gambling--the worship of chance--is death to the soul, to faith in human nature, to man’s nobler attributes. In this regard, it is more literally demoralizing than alcoholic drunkenness; and there is yet to be found the veteran professional gambler who is not a materialistic atheist.

Stop, once more, and remember that every man who will play cards for money, will in time, cheat. He may set out honestly enough, but it is only a question of time before he will take an unfair advantage in self-defense. What, then, can be thought of a practice that almost necessitates dishonesty?

Stop--hold! That “D--n!” upon thy lips! Would not “Confound it!” “The deuce take it!” or simply “Bless me!” emphasize resentment or annoyance equally well? Or, still better, is there any need for emphasis at all?

Stop, above all, before falling into the profane habit, upon no provocation. A passionless, half-conscious interlarding of speech with oaths and epithets is as idiotic as it is disgusting.

Stop on the verge of becoming anecdotal to excess. Second only to the confirmed scandal-bearer is the friend whose encounter one must dodge for fear of being made the repository of some long-winded anecdote, or pointless pun.

Stop short of narrating indecent stories. Unfortunately, nearly all stories of much point that are interchanged among men are of this description; ergo, eschew the retailing of them, on your own part, altogether.

Stop before becoming the slave of any depraved appetite. To take the appetite for strong drink as an illustration, it is a terrible enchantress--siren, bacchante, or task-mistress, at will. One can seldom coquette with but he marries her at last; when, like the Lamia of the legend, she turns to a serpent in the embrace, and her dalliance is despair and death.

Stop before contracting a habit of belittling or sneering at what you do not understand. This is but the pasteboard buckler with which the fool would shield his self-love.

Stop before habitually ascribing mean or sordid motives to others upon mere conjecture.

Stop short of any habit that can fruitlessly waste one’s time or substance, since the one is more than money, because, once dissipated, it can never be replaced, and the other is the very means of life.

In Judging Others.

Stop before gauging a person’s capacity solely by his physiognomy. Lafayette’s forehead suggested idiocy, Keats, the poet, had the jaws of a prize-fighter, and warriors of the Salvation Army have been mistaken (before opening their mouths) for men of intelligence.

Stop, however, before judging people altogether on antithetic grounds. To invariably accept a monkey-jawed, rat-eyed, ear-shadowed countenance as a criterion for mental profundity, for instance, or crime-sodden, sin-exhaling bulldog traits as suggestive of ethical culture or religious zeal, is hardly to be recommended.

Stop before judging others, especially men, wholly by their dress and manners. A millionaire may be “shabby-genteel” and retiring to excess, whereas professional scoundrels are often notorious for a fashionable exterior and distinction of bearing “as to the manner born.”

Stop on the verge of taking dress and ornament as a sure indication of a woman’s character or station. You might regret mistaking a quietly-attired unadorned heiress for a shirt-maker in distress; or a fourth-class pawnbroker’s wife, beringed and bediamonded from bang to belt, for a sorceress of fashion.

Stop before judging people disparagingly by their eccentricities. A poet, for instance, may indulge in long hair, without necessarily being an æsthete or a cowboy; the habit of talking to one’s-self is no proof of a guilty conscience; and absent-mindedness in many forms has accompanied the possession of exceptional capacity.

Stop, however, before accepting such betrayals as positive indications of either genius, talent or brains. To do this would be to libel the ordinarily well-behaved people who have some respect for the amenities of existence.

Stop, for instance, ere ascribing pure benevolence to the absent-mindedness that mistakes your silk umbrella for a mislaid gingham one, shaky in the ribs, feruled with long service, and filtery at the seams.

Stop and draw a line likewise, at the abstraction that finds its hand in your pocket, or creeps in at your bedroom window, or is blandly oblivious as to whether it owes you money, or vice versa.

Stop, and turn the question over in your mind: True enough, there is a chance of such eccentricities being the concomitants of a certain sort of talent, but is it exactly the sort that ought to be encouraged?

Stop, if naturally dishonest or vicious yourself, and inquire if you can fairly judge others according to your own corrupt standard. This may prevent your giving yourself away, besides leavening your collective baseness with a grain or two of charity.

Stop, however, if honest and well-meaning--and, indeed, it is mainly for such that this symposium of golden precepts is prepared--and remember, as a stimulant to careful discrimination in these things, that your own superficialities may be constantly and cruelly misjudged.

Stop short of supposing that you have no superficialities, or but few, to be judged by. The visibility of existence is largely made up of them; it is, perhaps even well that the heart is not often worn upon the sleeve; and equally well that our externals are but deceptive indices of the springs of action, the blots and foibles they disguise, else were the wisest of us each other’s sport.