Dispatch is the soul of business;and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method.Lay down a method for everything,and stick to it inviolably,as far as unexpected incidents may allow.Fix one certain hour and day in the week for your accounts,and keep them together in their proper order;by which means they will require very little time,and you can never be much cheated.Whatever letters and papers you keep,docket and tie them up in their respective classes,so that you may instantly have recourse to any one.Lay down a method also for your reading,for which you allot a certain share of your mornings;let it be in a consistent and consecutive course,and not in that desultory and unmethodical manner,in which many people read scraps of different authors,upon different subjects.Keep a useful and short commonplace book of what you read,to help your memory only,and not for pedantic quotations.Never read history without having maps and a chronological book,or tables,lying by you,and constantly recurred to;without which history is only a confused heap of facts.One method more I recommend to you,by which I have found great benefit,even in the most dissipated part of my life;that is,to rise early,and at the same hour every morning,how late soever you may have sat up the night before.This secures you an hour or two,at least,of reading or reflection before the common interruptions of the morning begin;and it will save your constitution,by forcing you to go to bed early,at least one night in three.
You will say,it may be,as many young people would,that all this order and method is very troublesome,only fit for dull people,and a disagreeable restraint upon the noble spirit and fire of youth.I deny it;and assert,on the contrary,that it will procure you both more time and more taste for your pleasures;and,so far from being troublesome to you,that after you have pursued it a month,it would be troublesome to you to lay it aside.Business whets the appetite,and gives a taste to pleasure,as exercise does to food;and business can never be done without method;it raises the spirits for pleasures;and a SPECTACLE,a ball,an assembly,will much more sensibly affect a man who has employed,than a man who has lost,the preceding part of the day;nay,I will venture to say,that a fine lady will seem to have more charms to a man of study or business,than to a saunterer.The same listlessness runs through his whole conduct,and he is as insipid in his pleasures,as inefficient in everything else.
I hope you earn your pleasures,and consequently taste them;for,by the way,I know a great many men,who call themselves men of pleasure,but who,in truth,have none.They adopt other people's indiscriminately,but without any taste of their own.I have known them often inflict excesses upon themselves because they thought them genteel;though they sat as awkwardly upon them as other people's clothes would have done.
Have no pleasures but your own,and then you will shine in them.What are yours?Give me a short history of them.'Tenez-vous votre coin a table,et dans les bonnes compagnies?y brillez-vous du cote de la politesse,de d'enjouement,du badinage?Etes-vous galant?Filex-vous le parfait amour?Est-il question de flechir par vos soins et par vos attentions les rigueurs de quelque fiere Princesse'?You may safely trust me;for though I am a severe censor of vice and folly,I am a friend and advocate for pleasures,and will contribute all in my power to yours.
There is a certain dignity to be kept up in pleasures,as well as in business.In love,a man may lose his heart with dignity;but if he loses his nose,he loses his character into the bargain.At table,a man may with decency have a distinguishing palate;but indiscriminate voraciousness degrades him to a glutton.A man may play with decency;but if he games,he is disgraced.Vivacity and wit make a man shine in company;but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon.[see Mark Twain's identical advice in his 'Speeches'D.W.]Every virtue,they say,has its kindred vice;every pleasure,I am sure,has its neighboring disgrace.Mark carefully,therefore,the line that separates them,and rather stop a yard short,than step an inch beyond it.
I wish to God that you had as much pleasure in following my advice,as Ihave in giving it you!and you may the more easily have it,as I give you none that is inconsistent with your pleasure.In all that I say to you,it is your interest alone that I consider:trust to my experience;you know you may to my affection.Adieu.
I have received no letter yet from you or Mr.Harte.