Chapter 2

Be temperate in eating your food, drinking cold water, taking exposure, in your hours and in general. For example, it is not a good plan to have too much of anything which you like particularly. It immediately dulls the sense of pleasure in that thing, and, raising the level of your likes to a degree that makes you dislike some other thing, perhaps, which you liked before, thus working a loss rather than a gain. Therefore, temperance, which is synonymous of moderation, in my use of the word, is the wisest thing you can practise. But be intemperate in the pursuit of your object. Let no expense be too large to equip yourself physically or mentally for your life's work, as, for example, to assure regular exercise, to cure any physical imperfection or disease, or for the furtherance of any desire for investigation on natural or scientific subjects or points of interest allied to the thing which you are seeking to attain. There is no need of moderation in labor, exposure, or discomfort. Thus you will eventually reach your ends, and may obtain results at which people will stand amazed, believing them to be beyond the range of possibilities, as they will not know that for years a systematic preparation has been going on to prepare yourself for this result.

As a boy, your desires have been limited by your opportunities. You have had certain kinds of recreation provided for you which you have enjoyed. Your expenditure of money has been limited by your purse, which will have been small if your parents were wise; and your expenditure of time will have been limited by the hours you have been unable to take from study, which will also have been small.

At college your opportunities will have broadened, and you begin to have something similar to the elective system. You can choose more freely how to spend your time. Your development to this point, I have already said, may be called the rounding of the handle; and your education will be normal if you have average application, intelligence, and memory. During college your future course will begin to shape itself, but before you fix upon your definite object there is likely to be a period at which you can be tempted into the greatest dissipation. By dissipation I do not mean the accepted term, but the scientific use of the word; namely, the useless expenditure of energy in futile pursuits. It is the opposite of concentration, which means directing energy upon your object. To make myself clearer, I will define energy as also meaning, in addition to your labor, your money, as money is the accumulated energy of your ancestors, just as coal is the accumulated energy of sunshine.

You must remember also that there is a certain amount of allowance to be made for some rather indefinite objects, which are none the less important, and which, for want of a better name, I shall call the Discard. Among these can be named the education of the imagination, having a good time generally, foolishness, mysticism, good fellowship, æsthetics, humanity, and humanities in general. The fact that many a man has thrown himself away by putting all his time into these things, and lived solely for good fellowship, for foolishness, or for imagination without attainment, is no reason why you should not partake in a small measure of these qualities, which is like the wheel grease on the axle or the clown in the circus. It is apt to be even more important yet, as it may prove to be the road to friendship, societies, society, and love. Moreover, you should not forget that, in the pursuit of your object, you must provide a material recreation for yourself,--literature, music, art, billiards, anything; something that will give you (and others, if possible) pleasure and diversion, and render your happiness independent of your work, if for any reason you are prevented from devoting your life to it.

We are now prepared to go over some of your pursuits with our touchstone, and see which ones we can recommend and which we cannot, which of the desires with which you are confronted or may be confronted are worth while or worth the expenditure of energy.

FOOD?

You should make no stipulation about your food, except that it be wholesome. The pleasantness of its taste in your mouth should have little weight with you. If you confine yourself to just that food which you like, and get so that your comfort depends on it, you will deliver over your freedom just as though you delivered yourself to be bound hand and foot in a dungeon. When the time comes that you must cut down your expenditure and live less "well," you become unhappy, as you have taught yourself to look upon all food with the idea that it should give you pleasure rather than sustenance.

YACHTING?

By all means. It gives judgment, coolness, and readiness to face and overcome danger, muscle, ozone, handiness of hands, steadiness of eye, experience, and a sense of the depth and expanse of the ocean. By all means, yachting, but not for the purpose of show, as giving orders before other people, of taking dilatory trips in fair weather only, and lounging in an easy-chair on the deck of some yacht while others take the responsibility and do the work. While going to the expense of keeping a boat, you should so mould your life as to use it constantly. If you keep a boat on the off chance of wanting it every other week or just for the sense of having it ready, you will make it an annoyance to yourself rather than a pleasure. But here caution is recommended; and you should only keep a yacht if you can do so well within your means, and thoroughly understanding that some day you may have to give it up, and that you must not think that a hardship.

CLOTHES?

Yes, but within bounds. You can always afford to pay more for clothes than they are worth, and pay more attention to them also than they are worth; but here again temperance is recommended.

HORSES?

Yes; that is, enough to learn to ride, to master your horse, develop your muscle and _abandon_ and poise, but not enough to watch jockeys carrying your colors or your coachman before you carrying your reins. Learn to ride, learn to drive; but that does not mean necessarily that you had better bring a pony back with you.

THEATRES?

Use theatres sparingly. They are perfect gluttons for time, and use up money. But of these the more important is time, and they make desperate inroads into the next day. So be temperate in theatres. Put part in for education and part for the discard.

BOOKS?

By all means. Spare no money on them. Be a spendthrift for books. We can always afford them; but pay for the printed matter, and not for the covers. If you choose books wisely and know what is in them and where to get at them when you want them, you can for a very small expense have a mine of information and recreation at your elbow, which could make you the best educated of men.

CLUBS?

Freely. It mostly goes to the discard; but you can afford that, provided you are careful not to have too great a waste of time. There are more opportunities lost inside of club walls than are gained.

CARDS?

There is no gain in gambling beyond the opportunity of watching the human character, and, incidentally to develop it; but it is time lost, and unworthily lost. The end does not justify the means. You had better play and read and sleep rather than gamble.

WINE?

Yes and no. Always in moderation. Do not acquire the habit of drinking. It is useless; and, after all that is said in favor of it by our mutual friend, Omar, and others, I can never see that a man is worse off for never having been drunk, and I am even Puritanical enough to think that he is better off, and, moreover, he has more self-respect, to say nothing of the respect of others. Nobody ever loses caste by refusing to drink. It is a difficult thing to do sometimes; but you know the old adage, that any man can lead a horse to water, but a hundred cannot make him drink. It is a pity that men should be inferior to horses in that respect. You will think that this is becoming a temperance lecture. Perhaps it is; but never mind, it does not call for total abstinence.

TOBACCO?

I can see no advantage to be gained by tobacco; and you will find that it administers to your comfort, and that is the only advantage that it has. This in itself is a very damaging kind of an advantage, as, without advancing your object, it endangers your freedom, as all comforts do.

ATHLETIC PROWESS?

By all means cultivate this and in every form possible, but even here have an eye to moderation. Do not develop your heart and lungs to such an extent that, when you have taken up a more sedentary life later, they will suffer a reaction. Almost all the great athletes suffer a few years' discomfort while adjusting themselves to a less athletic existence than was theirs in college. Therefore, be moderate and specialize in this, so that in after life you may do what you are best fitted for, and in the attainment of athletic success make a test case of your proficiency of attainment. Do not fear to be prodigal of energy concentrated on the right thing.

FURNITURE?

In fixing up your room, your house, or personal surroundings, have good, comfortable furniture for rest and for work, but not for show. Be simple, even to the extent of being severe. The fewer things you have, the better off you are. Shun all other possessions as the devil would holy water. Have nothing that is not for a definite purpose and that you do not actually use. The criterion to be applied to these is not what you can find use for, but what you cannot get along without. A traveller who knows his business can travel on very slender baggage, and be perfectly comfortable and clean. Consider yourself a traveller through this world, and study to cut down your baggage. Thus you will avoid dissipation, and keep your freedom.

PICTURES?

Yes. Do not be afraid to cultivate the artistic. It is a card thrown to the discard, but one which you cannot regret. Do not have too many. A jumble of pictures is not what you want, but a few good ones. Only beware lest a craze for expensive pictures overtake you, which would interfere with your more definite object. If, however, your career lies in the line of the artistic, the purchase and collection of fine pictures come well within the golden things passed by our touchstone. Many men get a craze after the futile,--a hobby it is usually called; and they will dissipate great amounts of energy in collecting such things as postage-stamps, post-marks, or some other object of little use, and at great expense of time and money.

If you allow such things to distract your attention from your object, you may lose it entirely, just as you lose sight of something in the hands of a conjurer who has succeeded in directing your attention to something of momentary interest. In this connection it is well to say that the habit of spending must be avoided. Let a large expenditure be a circumstance. You can afford, however, to spend money on charities even to the point of dissipation. It is a cultivation of the heart. It might prove a career; and so, before your object is chosen, you approach it, as a possibility, afterward, as a card for the discard, in either case creditable.

There are other classes of desires which appeal to the sensuous and sensual nature of man. Among these can be reckoned a taste for opium or morphine, a taste for women, or for those kinds of literature and drama which appeal to the sensuous nature. All these desires are like drunkenness, in that no one is the better off for gratifying them. Arguments of all sorts will be brought forward by men who have yielded to these desires; but, while convincing the one who is eager to be convinced, they are all of the negative sort,--they try to prove there is no reason why they should not. Our touchstone will not pass any such arguments: there must be positive reason why you should do a thing, otherwise do not do it.

This may seem Puritanical, but let's be Puritans to a certain extent. Play no games that are not distinctly winning games. There is a winning game to be played. Why, then, play a game which is neither a winning nor a losing game? It never gave me any pleasure to gamble with a machine or with cards, because I know these to be losing games. The plan of the game is always laid out so that the balance of chance is slightly against the player, sometimes considerably against the player, else why should the game be started?

We are left better off in no respect after all these desires are gratified. We are poorer in money, in pocket, in self-respect, and often in virtue.

We could go on so indefinitely through the list of all sorts of desires, but I have only touched upon a few of the more crucial ones to show how the touchstone should be applied; and even then results are crude, and would be of little help to you in fixing on a low scale of expenditure. They may, however, give you some ideas which will seem to guide you when you come to meet the problems for yourself.

And now we come back to the original question, whether you really want a pony. There are several really good ones in the stable that you can use. You are to be away a large part of the year, and you have never made half the use which you might have of your opportunities to ride.

I am, nevertheless, enclosing a check for the amount necessary to purchase your pony, because at your age I took a trip through the Rocky Mountains, which awakened in me a new desire for riding. It has proved my greatest ally in the severe strains to which the pursuit of my object has subjected me to, and because your ancestors have always kept their iron constitutions into extreme old age by almost daily rides, and because the sense of ownership of a horse may awaken in you the love and knowledge of the animal, and may accomplish a similar happy result.

Yours very truly, UNCLE JOSH.