that never existed, are insipidly displayed, and sentiments that were never felt, pompously described:  the Oriental ravings and extravagances of the “Arabian Nights,” and Mogul tales; or, the new flimsy brochures that now swarm in France, of fairy tales, ’Reflections sur le coeur et l’esprit, metaphysique de l’amour, analyse des beaux sentimens’, and such sort of idle frivolous stuff, that nourishes and improves the mind just as much as whipped cream would the body.  Stick to the best established books in every language; the celebrated poets, historians, orators, or philosophers.  By these means (to use a city metaphor) you will make fifty per cent.  Of that time, of which others do not make above three or four, or probably nothing at all.

Many people lose a great deal of their time by laziness; they loll and yawn in a great chair, tell themselves that they have not time to begin anything then, and that it will do as well another time.  This is a most unfortunate disposition, and the greatest obstruction to both knowledge and business.  At your age, you have no right nor claim to laziness; I have, if I please, being emeritus.  You are but just listed in the world, and must be active, diligent, indefatigable.  If ever you propose commanding with dignity, you must serve up to it with diligence.  Never put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day.

Dispatch is the soul of business; and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method.  Lay down a method for everything, and stick to it inviolably, as far as unexpected incidents may allow.  Fix one certain hour and day in the week for your accounts, and keep them together in their proper order; by which means they will require very little time, and you can never be much cheated.  Whatever letters and papers you keep, docket and tie them up in their respective classes, so that you may instantly have recourse to any one.  Lay down a method also for your reading, for which you allot a certain share of your mornings; let it be in a consistent and consecutive course, and not in that desultory and unmethodical manner, in which many people read scraps of different authors, upon different subjects.  Keep a useful and short commonplace book of what you read, to help your memory only, and not for pedantic quotations.  Never read history without having maps and a chronological book, or tables, lying by you, and constantly recurred to; without which history is only a confused heap of facts.  One method more I recommend to you, by which I have found great benefit, even in the most dissipated part of my life; that is, to rise early, and at the same hour every morning, how late soever you may have sat up the night before.  This secures you an hour or two, at least, of reading or reflection before the common interruptions of the morning begin; and it will save your constitution, by forcing you to go to bed early, at least one night in three.