Part 3
Stop, however, dead short of uxoriousness to a degree that shall excite a smile or comment. The former is apt to be exasperating, and the latter of a nature the reverse of soothing to your _amour propre_.
Stop before developing a womanish desire to interfere with domestic arrangements outside of your province. In other words, never be what your wife might call a “cock-biddy,” and your cook “an intermiddling mon.”
Stop before developing a fault-finding disposition with the cooking or other accommodations, or first be sure that you are not more responsible for the faults than your wife.
Stop short of concealing the fact from your wife, if she is falling unconsciously into slovenly and unkempt personal habits when only in your presence. Let her but comprehend that this is a wifely neglect that has driven many a husband into neater but unscrupulous feminine society, and speedy amendment must follow.
Stop before holding your wife accountable for every little smile or frankness accorded to her antenuptial admirers. ’Tis the watched fire that languishes; and, should she meditate treason, she would not hint it by so much as a rush-light.
Stop before letting her know it, if you find out that your marriage has been a mistake. Doubtless this will make itself felt, despite your utmost precautions, and her sufferings in making the sad discovery will then challenge your compunction, your pity and your redoubled devotion, if you are a true man.
Stop before laughing at piety in your wife, even if an infidel yourself. “Wise men like to have pious wives,” says Emerson, “and it is well for all concerned that it should be so.”
Stop before betraying your weaknesses to your children. Even a hypocritical assumption of a morality that you do not always practice is preferable to self-exposure in this regard.
Stop before correcting them in the presence of outsiders. The self-respect of a little child, once wounded to the quick, is long in healing; and some consideration is due, moreover, to the outsiders.
Stop before punishing a child when influenced by anger. The punishment then ceases to be corrective, and is only resentful; whereas the helplessness of the child should of itself evoke but magnanimity.
Stop, when thus impelled by anger, and reflect if you would as readily seek to gratify it, were no such disparity existent--that is, where the child as big and powerful as yourself.
Stop before threatening a chastisement that you don’t intend to inflict. Or, if you must persist in this course, don’t ascribe the continued disobedience, which is its inevitable outgrowth, to anything but your own weakness.
Stop short of deception or untruth in your dealings with your children, if you would impress them with the opposite sentiments.
Stop, in this regard, and reflect that, if the childish mind is wax to early impressions, it is of a kind that hardens with the imprint, and that from the hardening process spring the imitation and the _emulation_, which must gradually corrupt or ennoble, as the case may be.
Stop before assuming a bullying tone or attitude toward your family or your domestics. Vaporings of this description are always in wretched taste, and a home-circle that must needs be terrorized is little to be envied.
Stop before living beyond, or even quite up to your means, and be not ambitious to make an outside show at the expense of internal comfort.
Stop short of lessening the significance of old-time festivities, such as Thanksgiving Day, Christmas, New Year’s and birth-day observances, simply because you have yourself outgrown their zest.
Stop before repressing any innocent propensity to _gush_ on the part of your wife or children. It is a chill home-fountain that will not occasionally overflow.
Stop, if possible, before ever disturbing your family peace with even so much as an unkind or hasty word. The pretty lines,
“We have greeting words for the stranger, And smiles for the sometime guest, But oft for Our Own the bitter tone. Though we love Our Own the best,”
should never be pertinent in a wise man’s household.
Stop before assuming an oracular or infallible attitude--in other words, setting yourself up as a small god--before your own family. Ten to one, it is an assumption that you cannot maintain with any degree of consistency, and one which may entail a humiliating back-down when least expected.
In Business Life.
Stop short of attempting a business enterprise wholly beyond your mental and financial equipment. To attempt the _rôle_ of a railroad magnate, for instance, when you have the soul of a licensed fish-vender, or the manipulation of a government loan with hardly enough capital for a fruit-stand, would be more ambitious than wise.
Stop before adopting rigorous and unbending methods that, under a change of fortune, can be quoted against you to your disadvantage. Thus, to never lend money, on principle, when prosperous, but be perfectly willing to borrow it when broke, might subject you to unpleasant comment.
Stop before assuming a domineering, Jovian tone toward those with less money than you, even if you have a corner on the market. Men are often like rats in this, that they fight when they are cornered.
Stop when already so deep into a hopeless speculation that you can’t beg or borrow another cent, when certain ruin stares you in the face, and even your pawn-tickets are at a discount. Forlorn hopes are only practicable in serial stories and war.
Stop, even at the height of prosperity, and make sure of the future by settling upon your family a competence that shall thenceforth forever be secured to them, come what may. This prudent course, feasible and honorable during prosperity, would be just the reverse if deferred until after business disaster may have come.
Stop short of imagining that there is any more _luck_ in a legitimate business than in games of chance--in other words, that there is any at all. Or, if there is any, it consists of superior energy, foresight, shrewdness and application, wherein, of course, the stronger wins while the weaker goes to the wall.
Stop, and reflect well, before venturing outside of a legitimate, fairly-paying business upon the sea of speculation, which is in reality but gambling under another name.
Stop before cultivating a reputation for either over-credulity or relentless hard bargaining in business life. The one will be abused, while the other will foster enmities through the abuse it practices.
Stop short of uncompromising martinetism toward your employees. Our clerks, for instance, can no longer be treated as apprentices; many of them are rich men in embryo; and with what satisfaction and gratitude do powerful millionaires often recall slight kindnesses and encouragements received from their employers when they were nothing but obscure clerks or office-boys!
Stop before choosing business quarters of a magnitude and pretension wholly out of keeping with your trade and custom. There is a laughable case in point, in the upper part of New York, where a diminutive, tumble-down junk-shop displays a flaring sign with the preposterous legend: “Great American Mammoth Junk Emporium.”
Stop before advertising your commodities for something better than they really are. This is to cheat yourself in the long run, for the average of public buyers rarely allow themselves to be deliberately swindled twice by the same liar.
Stop short of supposing that the hackneyed phrase, “Business is business,” can ever excuse a downright dishonest transaction in the opinion of _all_ your business acquaintances.
Stop, therefore, before setting the majority of them down as secretly unprincipled, and vaunting their uprightness as a mask. Money-loving as they are, the majority of those whose good opinion is worth having are personally honest at the core.
Stop short of being dazzled by mere business success, irrespective of questionable or dangerous methods by which it may have been achieved. Unless the means shall have justified the result, there can be no praiseworthy success.
Stop short of supposing that spasmodic cleverness can ever take the place of solid method, organized effort and settled application in any respectable calling.
Stop, and go easy before provoking a powerful business hostility, if possible, but never to the sacrifice of a true principle; and, war being fully declared (_i.e._, competition, ruthless and uncompromising), let it be to the knife, to the bitter end, till the last pecuniary sinew snaps!
In Thought, Word and Deed.
Stop before even thinking unworthily. Not to entertain in the mind what you would blush to speak or put in writing is an excellent general rule of ethics.
Stop before nourishing a pride of nationality. This is even more unreasonable than the pride of ancestry, for the greatness of the latter may be in some degree inherited, while for the mere accident of birth-_place_ a man is as irresponsible as he is unentitled to plume himself upon historical greatness in the abstract.
Stop, also, before cherishing even a pride of race. This is wholly distinct from the virtue of Patriotism, in its best sense; is opposed to the enlightened spirit of the age; and is one of the narrowest of prejudices.
Stop short of despising public spirit in others, or eliminating it from your own calculations. The most insignificant pot-house politician is of more worldly use than the most gifted misanthrope. No amount of selfish seclusion or isolation can absolve one from his duty of fellowship.
Stop before making butts of others, especially by reason of personal peculiarities for which they are in no wise responsible. The old aphorism about stone-throwing in relation to glass domiciles is always in order; and even a natural-born fool is more to be pitied than ridiculed.
Stop putting in words that which you would not do, or putting in writing that which you would not sign.
Stop, and remember that an ill-considered angry word may, on the breath of hearsay, become a winged seed, from which shall spring a poisonous upas growth, whose deadly influence could not have been dreamed of at its inception.
Stop before falling into apathy, before becoming a do-nothing, through discouragements. “A great mind,” says _Lacon_, “may change its objects, but it cannot relinquish them; it must have something to pursue. Variety is its relaxation, and amusement its repose.”
Stop short of being painstaking to excess in what you would pass off as improvised. Over-elaboration in this regard may be likened to the dishabille in which a coquette would wish you to think you have surprised her, after spending hours at her toilet.
Stop short of supposing that rascality can be as uniformly logical as honesty. Villains are usually the worst casuists, and rush into _greater_ crimes to avoid _less_.
Stop, in combating the World, and reflect that by resisting its temptations you master the secret of ultimately possessing its noblest prizes, the respect of your fellows, and the proudest self-respect in having successfully withstood not in order to achieve, but from a sense of moral duty.
Stop, in resisting the allurements of the Flesh, and consider that by subjecting them to the yoke of reason, your capacity for rational fleshly enjoyment is both intensified and prolonged.
Stop, in fighting the Devil (_i.e._, moral perverseness,) and remember that your victory will be evidence of moral balance on your own part, rather than of faint-heartedness on His Inky Majesty’s. And you may likewise recall with complacency Emerson’s indictment, where he says, “It stands to reason that the Devil is an ass.”
Stop, after having fairly floored the Machiavellian triumvirate, the World, the Flesh and the Devil, and candidly confess that you might have fared worse but for the precepts and injunctions laid down in this little book.
THE END.
A GREAT HIT.
A NAUGHTY GIRL’S DIARY
---BY---
AUTHOR OF
“A Bad Boy’s Diary.”
_FULL OF FUN._
Price 50 cents.
[Transcriber’s Note:
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]