The pining need of a work of this kind—an instructive sharpener in book-form, as it were, of the moral faculty—has long been so seriously felt that the author eagerly hastens to supply it.

In “Never” and “Always,” his appeal was rather to the externalities of life. In “Stop,” his aim is to regulate the very springs of impulse, deliberation and resolve. In other words, there is not a temptation that he would not strip of its disguise, not an unworthy motive that he would not pulverize as with a corrective club, not a misleading conceit that he would not skewer to its squirming source.

Although the pearls of thought and monitory gems herewith presented are intended mainly for young men just entering upon the great work of life, there is neither man nor maid, stripling nor patriarch, saphead nor sage who may not scramble for them with avidity, and glory in their possession.

Young man, are you hesitating in the choice of a vocation? A reference to the admonitions under this head in “Stop” may be the means of your becoming a Millionaire, a Police Magistrate or an ornament to society. Are you in love, or willing to be? A consultation of the advice at your command may place you in such hobnobbing, soul-wedded relations with the rosy god as shall cause you to charm, to captivate, and finally to wrest the rapt, responsive throb from Beauty’s battlemented heart. Are you a driveling idiot in money matters? Imbibe, and be wise. And so on, through all the departments of existence.

Thus, panoplied, as it were, against the World, the Flesh and the Devil, you might eventually, in an agony of gratitude and wonderment, eulogize the author in the significant words of Hamlet, slightly altered, to the following effect:

“’Sblood! he plays on me easier than on a pipe! He would seem to know my Stops; he would pluck out the heart of my mystery; he would sound me from my lowest notes to the top of my compass; there is so much music, excellent voice and incomparable counsel in this little book!”