Stop before making a regular business of any form of diversion, which then ceases to be either recreative or relaxing, and but adds to the tissue-waste that should be restored.
Stop, next, and consider that recreation, in its literal and best sense, is something more than relaxation. More than to merely loosen, slacken and remit, to recreate is to revive, reanimate, recuperate and build up afresh.
Stop, therefore, before playing billiards or pool every night for five or six hours at a stretch, under the mistaken notion that you are combining recreation with amusement.
Stop, rather, and consider if the nervous tension produced by an unremitting desire to win, and thus saddle your adversary with the cost of the game, may not be greater than the wear and tear of the routine business from which you are seeking relief.
Stop short of the error that billiards in public is a wholly innocent diversion, when candid reflection must convince you to the contrary. The associations are mostly the reverse of refined, the gambling principle is necessarily involved, and say what you will, non-success is ever attended by a sense of exasperation.
Stop wondering why you don’t feel freshened up for business after a ten hours’ siege of whisky-poker, uninterrupted cigars, and consequent loss of sleep.
Stop before fancying chess-playing as any sort of relaxation whatever from mental exertion. The game, being a constant mental exercise, in itself should form a diversion from physical, rather than from intellectual, over-work.
Stop short of daily conviviality after business hours. The idea that regular rum or beer-guzzling, even with the merriest of companions, can be sooner or latter anything but injurious is either hypocritical or ridiculous.
Stop, likewise, short of spreeing as a relief from business cares. Indeed, as between the hebdomadal hurrah and the diurnal hoist, the distinction is so thoroughly relative to the confessedly evil effects in both cases as not to be worthy of consideration.
Stop before seeking recreation in low resorts. Give them all a wide berth—concert-saloons, dives, dens, hells, houses of ill-repute, bucket-shops, slums, cribs, joints—all! and remember that what is essentially debasing can never reanimate exhaustion or repair fatigue.