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.