MY DEAR FRIEND: Very few people are good economists of their fortune, and
still fewer of their time; and yet of the two, the latter is the most
precious. I heartily wish you to be a good economist of both: and you are
now of an age to begin to think seriously of those two important
articles. Young people are apt to think that they have so much time
before them, that they may squander what they please of it, and yet have
enough left; as very great fortunes have frequently seduced people to a
ruinous profusion. Fatal mistakes, always repented of, but always too
late! Old Mr. Lowndes, the famous Secretary of the Treasury in the reigns
of King William, Queen Anne, and King George the First, used to
say,--TAKE CARE OF THE PENCE, AND THE POUNDS WILL TAKE CARE OF
THEMSELVES. To this maxim, which he not only preached but practiced, his
two grandsons at this time owe the very considerable fortunes that he
left them.
This holds equally true as to time; and I most earnestly recommend to you
the care of those minutes and quarters of hours, in the course of the
day, which people think too short to deserve their attention; and yet, if
summed up at the end of the year, would amount to a very considerable
portion of time. For example: you are to be at such a place at twelve, by
appointment; you go out at eleven, to make two or three visits first;
those persons are not at home, instead of sauntering away that
intermediate time at a coffeehouse, and possibly alone, return home,
write a letter, beforehand, for the ensuing post, or take up a good book,
I do not mean Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, or Newton, by way of
dipping; but some book of rational amusement and detached pieces, as
Horace, Boileau, Waller, La Bruyere, etc. This will be so much time
saved, and by no means ill employed. Many people lose a great deal of
time by reading: for they read frivolous and idle books, such as the
absurd romances of the two last centuries; where characters, that never
existed, are insipidly displayed, and sentiments that were never felt,
pompously described: the Oriental ravings and extravagances of the
“Arabian Nights,” and Mogul tales; or, the new flimsy brochures that now
swarm in France, of fairy tales, ‘Reflections sur le coeur et l’esprit,
metaphysique de l’amour, analyse des beaux sentimens’, and such sort of
idle frivolous stuff, that nourishes and improves the mind just as much
as whipped cream would the body. Stick to the best established books in
every language; the celebrated poets, historians, orators, or
philosophers. By these means (to use a city metaphor) you will make fifty
PER CENT. Of that time, of which others do not make above three or four,
or probably nothing at all.
Many people lose a great deal of their time by laziness; they loll and
yawn in a great chair, tell themselves that they have not time to begin
anything then, and that it will do as well another time. This is a most
unfortunate disposition, and the greatest obstruction to both knowledge
and business. At your age, you have no right nor claim to laziness; I
have, if I please, being emeritus. You are but just listed in the world,
and must be active, diligent, indefatigable. If ever you propose
commanding with dignity, you must serve up to it with diligence. Never
put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day.
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 I
have 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.