The Young Man's Guide. Alcott William Andrus
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me merely request you, in this place, to form a habit of this kind, from which no ordinary circumstances shall suffer you to depart. Your first object after rising and devotion, should be to take a survey of the business which lies before you during the day, making of course a suitable allowance for exigencies. I have seldom known a man in business thrive—and men of business we all ought to be, whatever may be our occupation—who did not rise early in the morning, and plan his work for the day. Some of those who have been most successful, made it a point to have this done before daylight. Indeed, I was intimately acquainted with one man who laid out the business of the day, attended family worship, and breakfasted before sunrise; and this too, at all seasons of the year.
Morning gowns and slippers are very useful things, it is said. But the reasons given for their utility are equally in favor of always wearing them. 'They are loose and comfortable.' Very well: Should not our dress always be loose? 'They save other clothes.' Then why not wear them all day long? The truth, after all, is, that they are fashionable, and as we usually give the true reason for a thing last, this is probably the principal reason why they are so much in use. I am pretty well convinced, however, that they are of little real use to him who is determined to eat his bread 'in the sweat of his face,' according to the Divine appointment.
Looking-glasses are useful in their place, but like many other conveniences of life, by no means indispensable; and so much abused, that a man of sense would almost be tempted, for the sake of example, to lay them aside. Of all wasted time, none is more foolishly wasted than that which is employed in unnecessary looking at one's own pretty face.
This may seem a matter of small consequence; but nothing can be of small importance to which we are obliged to attend every day. If we dressed or shaved but once a year, or once a month, the case would be altered; but this is a piece of work that must be done once every day; and, as it may cost only about five minutes of time, and may be, and frequently is, made to cost thirty, or even fifty minutes; and, as only fifteen minutes make about a fiftieth part of the hours of our average daylight; this being the case, it is a matter of real importance.
Sir John Sinclair asked a friend whether he meant to have a son of his (then a little boy) taught Latin? 'No,' said he, 'but I mean to do something a great deal better for him.' 'What is that?' said Sir John. 'Why,' said the other, 'I mean to teach him to shave with cold water, and without a glass.'
My readers may smile, but I can assure them that Sir John is not alone. There are many others who have adopted this practice, and found it highly beneficial. One individual, who had tried it for years, has the following spirited remarks on the subject.
'Only think of the inconvenience attending the common practice! There must be hot water; to have this there must be a fire, and, in some cases, a fire for that purpose alone; to have these, there must be a servant, or you must light a fire yourself. For the want of these, the job is put off until a later hour: this causes a stripping and another dressing bout: or, you go in a slovenly state all that day, and the next day the thing must be done, or cleanliness must be abandoned altogether. If you are on a journey, you must wait the pleasure of the servants at the inn before you can dress and set out in the morning; the pleasant time for travelling is gone before you can move from the spot: instead of being at the end of your day's journey in good time, you are benighted, and have to endure all the great inconveniences attendant on tardy movements. And all this from the apparently insignificant affair of shaving. How many a piece of important business has failed from a short delay! And how many thousand of such delays daily proceed from this unworthy cause!'
These remarks are especially important to those persons in boarding-houses and elsewhere, for whom hot water, if they use it, must be expressly prepared.
Let me urge you never to say I cannot go, or do such a thing, till I am shaved or dressed. Take care always to be shaved and dressed, and then you will always be ready to act. But to this end the habit must be formed in early life, and pertinaciously adhered to.
There are those who can truly say that to the habit of adhering to the principles which have been laid down, they owe much of their success in life; that however sober, discreet, and abstinent they might have been, they never could have accomplished much without it. We should suppose by reasoning beforehand, that the army could not be very favorable to steady habits of this or any other kind; yet the following is the testimony of one who had made the trial.
'To the habit of early rising and husbanding my time well, more than to any other thing, I owed my very extraordinary promotion in the army. I was always ready. If I had to mount guard at ten, I was ready at nine: never did any man, or any thing, wait one moment for me. Being, at an age under twenty years, raised from corporal to sergeant major at once, over the heads of thirty sergeants, I should naturally have been an object of envy and hatred; but this habit of early rising really subdued these passions.
'Before my promotion, a clerk was wanted to make out the morning report of the regiment. I rendered the clerk unnecessary; and, long before any other man was dressed for the parade, my work for the morning was all done, and I myself was on the parade ground, walking, in fine weather, for an hour perhaps.
'My custom was this: to get up, in summer, at daylight, and in winter at four o'clock; shave, dress, even to the putting of my sword-belt over my shoulder, and having my sword lying on the table before me, ready to hang by my side. Then I ate a bit of cheese, or pork, and bread. Then I prepared my report, which was filled up as fast as the companies brought me in the materials. After this, I had an hour or two to read, before the time came for any duty out of doors, unless when the regiment, or part of it, went out to exercise in the morning. When this was the case, and the matter was left to me, I always had it on the ground in such time as that the bayonets glistened in the rising sun; a sight which gave me delight, of which I often think, but which I should in vain endeavor to describe.
'If the officers were to go out, eight or ten o'clock was the hour. Sweating men in the heat of the day, or breaking in upon the time for cooking their dinner, puts all things out of order, and all men out of humor. When I was commander, the men had a long day of leisure before them: they could ramble into the town or into the woods; go to get raspberries, to catch birds, to catch fish, or to pursue any other recreation, and such of them as chose, and were qualified, to work at their trades. So that here, arising solely from the early habits of one very young man, were pleasant and happy days given to hundreds.'
For my own part, I confess that only a few years since, I should have laughed heartily at some of these views, especially the cold water system of shaving. But a friend whom I esteemed, and who shaved with cold water, said so much in its favor that I ventured to make the trial; and I can truly say that I would not return to my former slavery to hot water, if I had a servant who had nothing else to do but furnish it. I cannot indeed say with a recent writer (I think in the Journal of Health) that cold water is a great deal better than warm; but I can and do say that it makes little if any difference with me which I use; though on going out into the cold air immediately afterward, the skin is more likely to chap after the use of warm water than cold. Besides I think the use of warm water more likely to produce eruptions on the skin.—Sometimes, though not generally, I shave, like Sir John Sinclair, without a glass; but I would never be enslaved to one, convenient as it is.
Cleanliness of the body has, some how or other, such a connection with mental and moral purity, (whether as cause or effect—or both—I will not undertake now to determine) that I am unwilling to omit the present opportunity of urging its importance. There are those who are so attentive to this subject as to wash their whole bodies in water, either cold or warm, every day of the year; and never to wear the same clothes, during the day, that they have slept in the previous night. Now this habit may by some be called whimsical; but I think it deserves a better name. I consider this extreme, if it ought to be called an extreme, as vastly more safe than the common extreme of neglect.
Is it not shameful—would it not be, were human duty properly understood—to pass months, and even years, without washing the whole body once? There are thousands and tens of thousands of both sexes, who are exceedingly nice, even to fastidiousness, about externals;—who,