Stop before instituting any home-amusement that shall bind you to the house of evenings forever thereafter. You might really want to go out and “see a man,” but the excuse would avail you little with the charming home-game awaiting your patronage.
Stop before frequenting any lounging place, be it beer-saloon or cigar-shop, so much as to become a figure-head of the premises. Not to loaf at all is an excellent general rule.
Stop before attempting recreation “on the road” in an ultra-economical way. A livery-stable plug, hobbling ambitiously before a battered sleigh or antediluvian buggy, in the midst of swell turn-outs and speeding teams, would doubtless cause something of a sensation, but would it be of the most enviable kind?
Stop short of seeking mental repose by attending “excursions” in which bibulous feats and glee-club improvisations bid fair to make up the chief fund of amusement.
Stop short of practical jokes as a relief for the work-oppressed brain. As between joker and jokee, the entertainment is mostly altogether with the former, and one-sided or top-heavy diversions are both selfish and untimely.
Stop, and be sure that you have a work-oppressed brain, before rushing wildly into any recreation whatever. The former is often imaginary, or a hypocritical excuse for demanding a pastime, which is then, as a consequence, apt to prove much harder work than play.
In The Domestic Relations.
Stop short of thinking that marriage and settlement in life can acquit you of the tenderness and reverence due your parents, even if they are well-to-do. It is a moral obligation which, contracted at your birth, should cease not even with their death, but live on and on, an evergreen of the memory, an amaranth of the heart.
Stop before reserving for the bosom of your own family the fits of ill-temper that you would be ashamed of if public. This is putting your own household on a level with a private bear-garden, whose limited spectators cannot be over-grateful for the privilege accorded.