Nothing tends more effectually to the production of genuine independence, than personal Economy. No habit will more fully enable you to be generous as well as just, and to gratify your better impulses and more refined tastes, than the exercise of this unostentatious art.
Remember that meanness is not economy, any more than it is integrity.
To be wisely economical requires the exercise of the reflective faculties united with practical experience, self-denial, and moral dignity. Rightly viewed, there is nothing in it degrading to the noblest nature.
Punctuality both in pleasure and in business engagements, is alike due to others, and essential to personal convenience. You will, perhaps, have observed that this was one of the distinguishing traits of Washington.
Somebody says—"Ceremony is the Paradise of Fools." The same may be said with equal truth, of system. To be truly free, one should not be the slave of any one rule, nor of many combined. System, like other agencies, if judiciously regulated, materially aids the establishment of good habits generally, and thus places us beyond the dominion of
"Circumstance, that unspiritual god."
Sir Joshua Reynolds used to remark that "Nothing is denied to well-directed effort." Let Perseverance then, be united with Excelsior in your practical creed.
I think I have made some allusion to the Art of Conversation. Let me "make assurance doubly sure," by the emphatic recommendation of practice in this elegant accomplishment. All mental acquisitions are the better secured by the habit of putting ideas into words. By this process, thought becomes clearer, more tangible, so to speak, and new ideas are actually engendered, while we are giving expression to those previously in our possession.
In addition to the individual advantage accruing from this excellent mode of training yourselves for easy and effective extemporaneous public speaking, it should not be overlooked, as affording the means of conferring both pleasure and benefit upon others. Taciturnity and self-engrossment, you may remark, are not the prominent characteristics of the favorites of society.
Nor does the practice of ready speaking necessarily interfere with habits of Reflection and Observation. On the contrary, the mental activity thus promoted, naturally leads to the accumulation of intellectual material by every available means. Discrimination in judging of character, and true knowledge of the world, without which all abstract knowledge is comparatively of little avail, can never be attained except through the persevering exercise of these powers.