Stop before patronizing a low performance of any description. Dog-fights, rat-baitings, cocking-mains, et al., are happily surreptitious now, but there are equally immoral exhibitions still in vogue to tempt the thoughtless and unwary.
Stop before seeking recreation in sensuous performances or spectacles. True, the ballet is often fascinating, but—Well, let the line be drawn sharply just after the ballet, at all events.
Stop before attempting either skating, bicycling, or horse-back exercise in public, as a gentle and graceful relaxation, when wholly inexperienced, if you would both corruscate and career.
Stop before making a specialty of any kind of recreation that is beyond your means. Otherwise, you may not infrequently exclaim, with Hamlet, “For O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot!”
Stop at the yawning abyss of resorting to opium, or any similar drug, as a relief from care. As the alcoholic habit has been likened to an enchantress, a circean witch, so the opium habit is a dream-woman, the sorceress of a phantom realm, elysian at first, but changing at last into a horror-haunted sphere that appals the spirit while it tortures and consumes the frame.
Stop before applying yourself to excessive gymnastics as a relaxation, if a horse-car conductor or a letter-carrier. Variety is the spice of life.
Stop, if engaged in wholly intellectual pursuits, before reading dry and statistical books, such as Patent Reports, as a pleasing and hilarious change.
Stop before joining a club with whose objects you are unfamiliar. To find yourself unawares, for instance, in the bosom of a hoodlum coterie when in search of Christian refinement, or unexpectedly affiliated with a Bible society when thirsting for roaring and convivial companionship, would be alike uncongenial.
Stop before seeking recreation in travel, if without money. True, commercial drummers and tramps have attained some success in this field, but neither the talents of the one class nor the methods of the other are to be cordially recommended.
Stop before indulging in the rougher athletic sports for which you are physically unqualified. Study your capacities well—take in the entire athletic range, from jackstraws to Indian clubs, from the bean-bag to foot-ball—and discriminate for all you are worth.