n. Never waste an
instant's time, therefore; the sin of idleness is a thousandfold greater
in you than in other youths; for the fates of those who will one day be
under your command hang upon your knowledge; lost moments now will be
lost lives then, and every instant which you carelessly take for play,
you buy with blood. But there is one way of wasting time, of all the
vilest, because it wastes, not time only, but the interest and energy of
your minds. Of all the ungentlemanly habits into which you can fall, the
vilest is betting, or interesting yourselves in the issues of betting.
It unites nearly every condition of folly and vice; you concentrate your
interest upon a matter of chance, instead of upon a subject of true
knowledge; and you back opinions which you have no grounds for forming,
merely because they are your own. All the insolence of egotism is in
this; and so far as the love of excitement is complicated with the hope
of winning money, you turn yourselves into the basest sort of
tradesmen--those who live by speculation. Were there no other ground for
industry, this would be a sufficient one; that it protected you from the
temptation to so scandalous a vice. Work faithfully, and you will put
yourselves in possession of a glorious and enlarging happiness: not such
as can be won by the speed of a horse, or marred by the obliquity of a
ball.

First, then, by industry you must fulfil your vow to your country; but
all industry and earnestness will be useless unless they are consecrated
by your resolution to be in all things men of honour; not honour in the
common sense only, but in the highest. Rest on the force of the two main
words in the great verse, _integer_ vitae, scelerisque _purus_. You have
vowed your life to England; give it her wholly--a bright, stainless,
perfect life--a knightly life. Because you have to fight with machines
instead of lances, there may be a necessity for more ghastly danger, but
there is none for less worthiness of character, than in olden time. You
may be true knights yet, though perhaps not _equites_; you may have to
call yourselves 'cannonry' instead of 'chivalry,' but that is no reason
why you should not call yourselves true men. So the first thing you have
to see to in becoming soldiers is that you make yourselves wholly true.
Courage is a mere matter of course among any ordinarily well-born
youths; but neither truth nor gentleness is matter of course. You must
bind them like shi