e thus in all
other trades, how much time would be saved, and how much immorality
prevented!

73. As to the spending of your time, your business or your profession
is to claim the priority of everything else. Unless that be _duly
attended to_, there can be no real pleasure in any other employment of
a portion of your time. Men, however, must have some leisure, some
relaxation from business; and in the choice of this relaxation much of
your happiness will depend. Where fields and gardens are at hand, they
present the most rational scenes for leisure. As to company, I have
said enough in the former letter to deter any young man from that of
drunkards and rioting companions; but there is such a thing as your
quiet '_pipe-and-pot-companions_,' which are, perhaps, the most fatal
of all. Nothing can be conceived more dull, more stupid, more the
contrary of edification and rational amusement, than sitting, sotting,
over a pot and a glass, sending out smoke from the head, and
articulating, at intervals, nonsense about all sorts of things. Seven
years service as a galley-slave would be more bearable to a man of
sense, than seven months confinement to society like this. Yet, such is
the effect of habit, that, if a young man become a frequenter of such
scenes, the idle propensity sticks to him for life. Some companions,
however, every man must have; but these every well-behaved man will find
in private houses, where families are found residing and where the
suitable intercourse takes place between women and men. A man that
cannot pass an evening without drink merits the name of a sot. Why
should there be drink for the purpose of carrying on conversation? Women
stand in need of no drink to stimulate them to converse; and I have a
thousand times admired their patience in sitting quietly at their work,
while their husbands are engaged, in the same room, with bottles and
glasses before them, thinking nothing of the expense and still less of
the shame which the distinction reflects upon them. We have to thank the
women for many things, and particularly for their sobriety, for fear of
following their example in which men drive them from the table, as if
they said to them: 'You have had enough; food is sufficient for you; but
we must remain to fill ourselves with drink, and to talk in language
which your ears ought not to endure.' When women are getting up to
retire from the table, men rise _in honour of_ them; but they take
special car