PASSANT. In order to do this, I prescribed to myself a rule, to
pass directly from the toils of the day and the store to my chamber,
suffering no stoppage by the way, and studiously denying myself
the dangerous fascinations of that society which was everywhere at
command, in the persons of young men about my own age and condition.
The intensity of my character, and the suspiciousness which it
induced, helped me in this determination. Perhaps, there is no
greater danger to a young man's habits of study and business, than
a chat at the street corner, with a merry and thoughtless group.
A single half hour consumed in this manner, is almost always fatal
to the remaining hours of the day. It breaks into the circle, and
impairs the method without which the passage of the sun becomes
a very weary and always an unprofitable progress. If you would
be a student or anything, you must plunge headlong into it at the
beginning--bury yourself in your business, and work your way out
of your toils, by sheer, dogged industry.

My labors were so far successful that I could prosecute my studies
with independence. I had left the dwelling of my uncle the moment
I took employment in the mercantile house. My salary, though small,
was ample; with my habits, it was particularly so. I had few of
those vices in which young men are apt to indulge, and which, when
they become habits, cease unhappily to be regarded as vices. I used
tobacco in no shape, and no ardent spirits. I needed no stimulants,
and, by the way, true industry never does. It is only indolence that
needs drink; and indolence does need it; and the sooner drunkenness
kills indolence by the use of drink, the better for society. The
only objection to liquors as an agent for ridding the community of
a nuisance, is, that it is rather too slow, and too offensive in
its detailed operations; arsenic would be far less offensive, more