Stop before making a regular business of any form of diversion, which then ceases to be either recreative or relaxing, and but adds to the tissue-waste that should be restored.

Stop, next, and consider that recreation, in its literal and best sense, is something more than relaxation. More than to merely loosen, slacken and remit, to recreate is to revive, reanimate, recuperate and build up afresh.

Stop, therefore, before playing billiards or pool every night for five or six hours at a stretch, under the mistaken notion that you are combining recreation with amusement.

Stop, rather, and consider if the nervous tension produced by an unremitting desire to win, and thus saddle your adversary with the cost of the game, may not be greater than the wear and tear of the routine business from which you are seeking relief.

Stop short of the error that billiards in public is a wholly innocent diversion, when candid reflection must convince you to the contrary. The associations are mostly the reverse of refined, the gambling principle is necessarily involved, and say what you will, non-success is ever attended by a sense of exasperation.

Stop wondering why you don’t feel freshened up for business after a ten hours’ siege of whisky-poker, uninterrupted cigars, and consequent loss of sleep.

Stop before fancying chess-playing as any sort of relaxation whatever from mental exertion. The game, being a constant mental exercise, in itself should form a diversion from physical, rather than from intellectual, over-work.

Stop short of daily conviviality after business hours. The idea that regular rum or beer-guzzling, even with the merriest of companions, can be sooner or latter anything but injurious is either hypocritical or ridiculous.

Stop, likewise, short of spreeing as a relief from business cares. Indeed, as between the hebdomadal hurrah and the diurnal hoist, the distinction is so thoroughly relative to the confessedly evil effects in both cases as not to be worthy of consideration.

Stop before seeking recreation in low resorts. Give them all a wide berth—concert-saloons, dives, dens, hells, houses of ill-repute, bucket-shops, slums, cribs, joints—all! and remember that what is essentially debasing can never reanimate exhaustion or repair fatigue.

Stop before patronizing a low performance of any description. Dog-fights, rat-baitings, cocking-mains, et al., are happily surreptitious now, but there are equally immoral exhibitions still in vogue to tempt the thoughtless and unwary.

Stop before seeking recreation in sensuous performances or spectacles. True, the ballet is often fascinating, but—Well, let the line be drawn sharply just after the ballet, at all events.

Stop before attempting either skating, bicycling, or horse-back exercise in public, as a gentle and graceful relaxation, when wholly inexperienced, if you would both corruscate and career.

Stop before making a specialty of any kind of recreation that is beyond your means. Otherwise, you may not infrequently exclaim, with Hamlet, “For O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot!”

Stop at the yawning abyss of resorting to opium, or any similar drug, as a relief from care. As the alcoholic habit has been likened to an enchantress, a circean witch, so the opium habit is a dream-woman, the sorceress of a phantom realm, elysian at first, but changing at last into a horror-haunted sphere that appals the spirit while it tortures and consumes the frame.

Stop before applying yourself to excessive gymnastics as a relaxation, if a horse-car conductor or a letter-carrier. Variety is the spice of life.

Stop, if engaged in wholly intellectual pursuits, before reading dry and statistical books, such as Patent Reports, as a pleasing and hilarious change.

Stop before joining a club with whose objects you are unfamiliar. To find yourself unawares, for instance, in the bosom of a hoodlum coterie when in search of Christian refinement, or unexpectedly affiliated with a Bible society when thirsting for roaring and convivial companionship, would be alike uncongenial.

Stop before seeking recreation in travel, if without money. True, commercial drummers and tramps have attained some success in this field, but neither the talents of the one class nor the methods of the other are to be cordially recommended.

Stop before indulging in the rougher athletic sports for which you are physically unqualified. Study your capacities well—take in the entire athletic range, from jackstraws to Indian clubs, from the bean-bag to foot-ball—and discriminate for all you are worth.

Stop before instituting any home-amusement that shall bind you to the house of evenings forever thereafter. You might really want to go out and “see a man,” but the excuse would avail you little with the charming home-game awaiting your patronage.

Stop before frequenting any lounging place, be it beer-saloon or cigar-shop, so much as to become a figure-head of the premises. Not to loaf at all is an excellent general rule.

Stop before attempting recreation “on the road” in an ultra-economical way. A livery-stable plug, hobbling ambitiously before a battered sleigh or antediluvian buggy, in the midst of swell turn-outs and speeding teams, would doubtless cause something of a sensation, but would it be of the most enviable kind?

Stop short of seeking mental repose by attending “excursions” in which bibulous feats and glee-club improvisations bid fair to make up the chief fund of amusement.

Stop short of practical jokes as a relief for the work-oppressed brain. As between joker and jokee, the entertainment is mostly altogether with the former, and one-sided or top-heavy diversions are both selfish and untimely.

Stop, and be sure that you have a work-oppressed brain, before rushing wildly into any recreation whatever. The former is often imaginary, or a hypocritical excuse for demanding a pastime, which is then, as a consequence, apt to prove much harder work than play.