to begin
anything then, and that it will do as well another time. This is a most
unfortunate disposition, and the greatest obstruction to both knowledge
and business. At your age, you have no right nor claim to laziness; I
have, if I please, being emeritus. You are but just listed in the world,
and must be active, diligent, indefatigable. If ever you propose
commanding with dignity, you must serve up to it with diligence. Never
put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day.

Dispatch is the soul of business; and nothing contributes more to
dispatch than method. Lay down a method for everything, and stick to it
inviolably, as far as unexpected incidents may allow. Fix one certain
hour and day in the week for your accounts, and keep them together in
their proper order; by which means they will require very little time,
and you can never be much cheated. Whatever letters and papers you keep,
docket and tie them up in their respective classes, so that you may
instantly have recourse to any one. Lay down a method also for your
reading, for which you allot a certain share of your mornings; let it be
in a consistent and consecutive course, and not in that desultory and
unmethodical manner, in which many people read scraps of different
authors, upon different subjects. Keep a useful and short commonplace
book of what you read, to help your memory only, and not for pedantic
quotations. Never read history without having maps and a chronological
book, or tables, lying by you, and constantly recurred to; without which
history is only a confused heap of facts. One method more I recommend to
you, by which I have found great benefit, even in the most dissipated
part of my life; that is, to rise early, and at the same hour every
morning, how late soever you may have sat up the night before. This
secures you an hour or two, at least, of reading or reflection before the
common interruptions of the morning begin; and it will save your
constitution, by forcing you to go to bed early, at least one night in
three.

You will say, it may be, as many young people would, that all this order
and method is very troublesome, only fit for dull people, and a
disagreeable restraint upon the noble spirit and fire of youth. I deny
it; and assert, on the contrary, that it will procure you both more time
and more taste for your pleasures; and, so far from being troublesome to
you, that after you have pursued it a month, it would be troublesome to
you to