In order to hold yourselves masters of your appetites, begin early. It is no use for a man forty-five years of age beginning to say he is going to turn over a new leaf; the leaves won’t be turned then. I think, perhaps, I may be speaking discouragingly to some man who is making at that time of life a resolution to do better. Well, to resolution, to perseverance, to devout energy, it is possible, but it is not easy.
Young man, lay down your cigar; it will do you no good. Throw away your pipe; it does not make you manly; it only makes you a nuisance to other and better people; and don’t touch strong drink of any kind whatever. This is the testimony that I have to bear: that he who gives way to these things in his youth is committing suicide by inches. He is taking away his will-power, he is dulling his finest sensibilities.
It does not tell upon him all at once; he may live to be an old man and say: “It is a very slow poison.” What he might have been he never thinks of; he only sees what he is, a tough, much-enduring man; whereas, he might have been a very prince, and king, and guide, and friend among the highest classes of the land. Let me ask you to attend to the discipline of saying “No.”
I love to see the practice of manly sports of the right kind: running, leaping, swimming, and divers gymnastic exercises. I rejoice exceedingly in all these athletic pastimes, and in all these disciplinary sports and enjoyments. They have a great purpose to serve, but there is still a higher discipline—a discipline of the soul; a discipline which enables one to look at a bodily advantage and say: “I will not touch it;” the discipline which enables a man to receive an invitation, on gilt-edged paper and scented, to spend an evening with sinners in their gluttony and their wine bibbing, and that enables him to put it into the fire.—PARKER.