e manufacturer, master-workman,
owner of land, or private individual, you are now thoroughly impressed
with the duty of attending to the welfare of your dependants; I proceed
to make some general reflections which may aid you in your outset, or
sustain you in the progress, of your endeavours.

* * * * *

And, first, let me implore you not to delay that outset. Make a
beginning at once, at least in investigating the matters to which I have
striven to draw your attention. It is no curious work of art that you
have to take up; it requires no nicety of apprehension; you can hardly
begin wrongly, I do not say in action, but in the preparation for action.
However little of each day you may be able to call your own for this
purpose, it is better to begin with that little than to wait for some
signal time of leisure. Routine encumbers us; our days are frittered
away by most minute employments that we cannot control; and, when spare
moments do occur, we are mostly unprepared with any pursuits of our own
to go on with. Hence it is, that the most obvious evils go on,
generation after generation, people not having time, as they would say,
to interfere. Men are for ever putting off the concerns which should be
dearest to them to a "more convenient season," when, as they hope, there
may be fewer trifles to distract their attention: but a great work, which
is to commence in the heart, requires not to have the first stone laid
for it, with pomp, upon some holiday. It. is good to have made a
beginning upon it at any time.

The wisdom, or the folly, of delay is in most instances like that of a
traveller coming to a stream, and wishing to ford it, yet continuing his
journey along its banks: and whether this is wise, or not, depends mainly
on the simple fact, of whether he is walking up to the source, or down to
the fall. The latter is apt to be the direction in the case of our
generous resolves: their difficulty widens as I we delay to act upon
them.

* * * * *

Throughout the progress of your work, there is nothing that you will have
more frequently to be mindful of than your views with respect to
self-advancement. To take one form of it, the acquisition of money.
Money, as Charles Lamb, a great despiser of cant, observed, is not dross,
but books, pictures, wines, and many pleasant things. Still I suspect
that money is more sought after to gratify vanity, than