th an ambition to be successful,
must also be careful of his social life. It is not enough that he
should take care of himself during the day. To social dissipations at
night can be traced the downfall of hundreds upon hundreds of young
men. The idea that an employer has no control over a young man's time
away from the office is a dangerous fallacy. An employer has every
right to ask that those into whose hands he entrusts responsibilities
shall follow social habits which will not endanger his interests upon
the morrow. So far as social life is concerned, young men generally run
to both extremes. Either they do not go out at all, which is
stagnating, or they go out too much, which is deadly. Only here and
there is found one who knows the happy medium. A certain amount of
social diversion is essential to everybody, boy, man, girl, or woman.
And particularly so to a young man with a career to make. To come into
contact with the social side of people is broadening; it is educative.
"To know people," says a writer, "you must see them at play." Social
life can be made a study at the same time that it is made a pleasure.
To know the wants of people, to learn their softer side, you must come
into contact with their social natures. No young man can afford to deny
himself certain pleasures, or a reasonable amount of contact with
people in the outer world. It is to his advantage that people should
know he exists,--what his aims and aspirations are. His evening
occupations should be as widely different as possible from those which
occupy his thoughts in the daytime. The mind needs a change of thought
as well as the body needs a change of raiment. The familiar maxim, "All
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," contains a vast amount of
truth.

At the same time, nothing is more injurious to the chances of a young
man in business than an overindulgence in the pleasures of what, for
the want of a better word, we call "society." It is a rough but a true
saying that "a man cannot drink whisky and be in business." Perhaps a
softer interpretation of the idea would be this: that a man cannot be
in society and be in business. This is impossible, and nothing that a
young man can bear in mind will stand him to such good account as this
fact. No mind can be fresh in the morning that has been kept at a
tension the night before by late hours, or befogged by indulgence in
late suppers. We need more sleep at twenty-five than we do at fifty,
and