and wretchedness.

To set up and miscarry is like the blast to the blossom; if it does not absolutely kill, it leaves it diseased. Hold the rein then tight on your impatience, and examine the ground over and over again before you start for the prize. It has been observed that few or none thrive, who set up the moment they are out of the leading-strings as it were; hope has too great an ascendency at that time of life, and the youth is sanguine enough to begin where his old master left off. But the ship that sets out with all sail and no ballast, is sure to turn bottom upwards.

Would you, therefore, be persuaded to tread the same steps that have carried many through life with credit to themselves, enter for a year or two into the service of the shrewdest and most experienced person of your profession. You will learn more dexterity and address in the procuring and dispatch of business during that interval, than in

the whole seven years you had served already. It will besides give you leisure to look round for a proper place to settle in, where there is a vacancy that you may hope to fill with success; and likewise to select those dealers who will be likely to serve you best on one hand, and to court those customers who give the surest pay and the largest orders, on the other. Or, if you are too weary of servitude and dependence to endure it any longer, enter into partnership with such a one as is above described; and though you may expect he will manage so, that the contract shall rather incline to his advantage, you will be a gainer upon the whole; thenceforward his experience, his address, and his sagacity, will be yours; and, for the sake of his own interest and character, he will be equally vigilant of yours.

REGULAR HOURS.

THESE are among the most important means of health and long life. You may educate both the body and the mind to almost any kind of regular habits, but you can never accommodate them to irregularities.

They

must know what to expect, and must not be disappointed. Having accustomed your stomach, for instance, to receive its food at a particular hour, when that hour arrives it will be prepared to digest it. But if you eat an hour or two sooner, the stomach is taken by surprise; it is unprepared for its task, and consequently will do its work badly; as will be indicated by headache, stupor, or some other morbid symptoms.

The same is true in regard to sleep. Accustom yourself to retire to bed at a particular time; and when that time

comes, your eyelids will almost irresistibly close. Retire to rest then, and you will almost immediately fall into sweet and refreshing sleep; but, pass an hour or two over that time, and a morbid wakefulness will ensue, from which you will afterwards find it difficult to compose yourself to sleep. The effect upon your health and spirits will be sad the next day.

The same principle holds in securing the regular function of the bowels, so essential to health. There is probably nothing which costs so little attention, and yet contributes so much to the healthy action of the whole system. To secure this effectually it is necessary to observe the most punctual and exact regularity possible. Very obstinate constipation may thus be over

come.

To be out at nights, beyond the usual hour for retiring, to be irregular in the time of your meals, to indulge the bed in the morning, to neglect ex

ercise, to fail of adapting your dress to the weather, and to your circumstances of exposure—such things may seem to you trifles now; you may not perceive that they injure you; but they are exhausting that fountain, which, while full, may give no indications of diminution, but when nearly gone will reveal to you what I now tell you.

We can hardly conceive of the point of energy to which a man may raise himself, and the amount of labor which he can accomplish, with not only safety but advantage to his health, by habits of strict regularity.

I do not mean to say that a man can never deviate a little from his usual course without injury; it is sometimes necessary to do this; I speak of the general habit. It is sometimes well to omit a meal, in order to let the organs of digestion rest. Unless you live very abstemiously, you will probably do well to fast from at least one meal every week; but when you do this,