Part 8

Stop before taking mildness and retirement of manner for a want of resolution or courage. True greatness in anything is seldom self-celebrating, and it is as true as proverbial that “still waters run deep.”

Stop, on the other hand, before setting down a strutting self-importance as invariably betokening a wind-bag or a nincompoop. Modesty is, unfortunately, not always the hand-maid of merit.

Stop before mistaking ostentation for generosity, or calm acceptance for ingratitude. “As the mean have a calculating avarice that sometimes inclines them to give, so the magnanimous have a condescending generosity that sometimes inclines them to receive.”

Stop before despising in another the demonstrativeness that you would despise in yourself. The babble of the brook is as natural as the stillness of the pool and temperamental differences are always to be considered.

Stop before regarding extreme particularity in dress as an invariable evidence of intellectual insignificance. It often is so, but nine-tenths of the shabbily-attired men of brains would dress better if they could afford to.

Stop on the dizzy verge of mistaking an excessive and painstaking courtesy for a genuine and heartfelt interest. It should rather put you on your guard.

Stop short of the old-time cynicism of regarding every man as a rascal until he shall have afforded proofs to the contrary. Such a wholesale distrust of human nature is creditable to neither the head nor the heart.

Stop before sweepingly condemning a discreditable action the temptations to which are outside your own experience. Even to “put yourself in his place” is not always available for the formation of intelligent criticism in such cases.

Stop before lightly assigning reasons for another’s domestic troubles. The closet-skeleton is a strictly local spectre that is not the less terrible by reason of the narrowness of its haunting powers.

Stop short of disparaging the charity that methodizes and calculates its smallest alms. There is an enlightened self-interest that relieves more real distress than all the off-handed gratuities that are bestowed.

Stop before impugning self-seeking motives to a good deed that redounds to the doer’s advantage. Even if partly premeditated to this end, the result, if humanitarian in its general influence, is not the less useful and noble.

Stop before judging a man solely by his errors or misfortunes. The former may have been circumstantially unavoidable, as the latter may have been undeserved.

Stop before adopting the stereotyped, canting “I-might-have-told-you-so” criticism in the case of a friend who has fallen. The helping hand is then in order, if ever at all; and he is doubtless aware of the cause of his disgrace, without your telling him.

In Recreation.

Stop before making a regular business of any form of diversion, which then ceases to be either recreative or relaxing, and but adds to the tissue-waste that should be restored.

Stop, next, and consider that recreation, in its literal and best sense, is something more than relaxation. More than to merely loosen, slacken and remit, to recreate is to revive, reanimate, recuperate and build up afresh.

Stop, therefore, before playing billiards or pool every night for five or six hours at a stretch, under the mistaken notion that you are combining recreation with amusement.

Stop, rather, and consider if the nervous tension produced by an unremitting desire to win, and thus saddle your adversary with the cost of the game, may not be greater than the wear and tear of the routine business from which you are seeking relief.

Stop short of the error that billiards in public is a wholly innocent diversion, when candid reflection must convince you to the contrary. The associations are mostly the reverse of refined, the gambling principle is necessarily involved, and say what you will, non-success is ever attended by a sense of exasperation.

Stop wondering why you don’t feel freshened up for business after a ten hours’ siege of whisky-poker, uninterrupted cigars, and consequent loss of sleep.

Stop before fancying chess-playing as any sort of relaxation whatever from mental exertion. The game, being a constant mental exercise, in itself should form a diversion from physical, rather than from intellectual, over-work.

Stop short of daily conviviality after business hours. The idea that regular rum or beer-guzzling, even with the merriest of companions, can be sooner or latter anything but injurious is either hypocritical or ridiculous.

Stop, likewise, short of spreeing as a relief from business cares. Indeed, as between the hebdomadal hurrah and the diurnal hoist, the distinction is so thoroughly relative to the confessedly evil effects in both cases as not to be worthy of consideration.

Stop before seeking recreation in low resorts. Give them all a wide berth--concert-saloons, dives, dens, hells, houses of ill-repute, bucket-shops, slums, cribs, joints--all! and remember that what is essentially debasing can never reanimate exhaustion or repair fatigue.

Stop before patronizing a low performance of any description. Dog-fights, rat-baitings, cocking-mains, et al., are happily surreptitious now, but there are equally immoral exhibitions still in vogue to tempt the thoughtless and unwary.

Stop before seeking recreation in sensuous performances or spectacles. True, the ballet is often fascinating, but--Well, let the line be drawn sharply just after the ballet, at all events.

Stop before attempting either skating, bicycling, or horse-back exercise in public, as a gentle and graceful relaxation, when wholly inexperienced, if you would both corruscate and career.

Stop before making a specialty of any kind of recreation that is beyond your means. Otherwise, you may not infrequently exclaim, with Hamlet, “For O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot!”