A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings

No. XXIX

 HARTFORD, JANUARY, 1790.

At a time of life when the passions are lively and strong, when the reezoning powers scarcely begin to be exercised, and the judgement iz not yet ripened by experience and obzervation, it iz of infinit consequence that yung persons should avail themselves of the advice of their frends. It iz tru that the maxims of old age are sometimes too rigorous to be relished by the yung; but in general they are to be valued az the lessons of infallible experience, and ought to be the guides of youth. The opinions here offered to your consideration hav not the advantage of great age to giv them weight, nor do they claim the authority of long experience: But they are formed from some experience, with much reeding and reflection; and so far az a zeel for your welfare and respectability in future life merits your regard, so far this address haz a claim to your notis.

The first thing recommended to your attention iz, the care of your helth and the prezervation of your bodily constitution. In no particular iz the neglect of parents and guardians more obvious and fatal, than in suffering the bodies of their children to grow without care. My remark applies in particular to thoze who design their children to get a living without manual labor. Let yung persons then attend to facts, which are always before their eyes.

Nature seldom fails to giv both sexes the materials of a good constitution; that iz, a body complete in all its parts. But it depends mostly on persons themselves to manage theze materials, so az to giv them strength and solidity.

The most criticcal period of life, in this respect, iz the age of puberty, which iz usually between thirteen and seventeen, or eighteen. Before this period, you are very much in the power of parents or masters, and if they wish to see you strong and robust, they wil feed you with coarse substantial food of eezy digestion. But at fourteen yeers old, yung persons are capable of exercising their reezon, in some degree, and ought to be instructed in the mode of living, best calculated to secure helth and long life. It iz obzervable that yung persons of both sexes grow tall very rapidly about the age of thirteen, fourteen, fifteen or sixteen; but they do not acquire muscular strength in du proportion. It should then be the bizziness of yung persons to assist nature, and strengthen the growing frame by athletic exercises.

Thoze persons who leed a sedentary life, should practis some amusement which requires considerable exertion of the lims; az running, foot ball, quoit; taking care not to injure themselves by too violent exertion; for this would defeet the salutary purpose of such exercizes. But the exercize I would most recommend, iz fencing; for the art itself iz highly useful at times, and the practice tends more to render the body firm and vigorous than almost any exercize whatever. It braces the muscles of the arm, spreds the brest, opens the chest to giv the lungs play; an effect of great consequence to persons about the age of puberty. For, az waz before obzerved, persons of this age, shoot up very fast; the body grows tall, but narrow; the mass of flesh and blood iz increesed much faster than the tone of the vessels and muscular strength; the chest iz two narrow for the lungs to perform their office, and the blood vessels hav not sufficient elasticity to produce a brisk free circulation; the system iz often too week to carry on the necessary secretions of the juices; and the consequence of the whole iz, an obstructed circulation produces ulcers upon the lungs, which bring on a decay, or some infirmities of body, which last for many yeers, and not unfrequently for life.

To avoid theze ills, much exercise of the arms and body iz not only useful, but necessary; and when it iz not the lot of yung persons to labor, in agriculture or mekanic arts, some laborious amusement should be constantly and daily pursued az a substitute, and none iz preferable to fencing. A fencing skool iz perhaps az necessary an institution in a college, az a professorship of mathematics; for yung men usually enter college about the age of puberty; and often leev a laborious occupation, to commence a sedentary life, at the very time when labor or other exercize iz the most necessary to giv firmness and vigor to their constitutions. In consequence of this change and an academic life, they often run up into long, slender, effeminate bodies, which a slight cold may throw into a consumption; or by intense application to books, add, to a debilitated frame of body, a week nervous system, which keeps them always dying, tho it may not end life til old age.

Dancing iz an excellent amusement for yung peeple, especially for thoze of sedentary occupations. Its excellence consists in exciting a cheerfulness of the mind, highly essential to helth; in bracing the muscles of the body, and in producing copious perspiration. Az the two first effects are very visibly beneficial, they are the subject of common obzervation; but the last, which iz perhaps the most generally beneficial, iz rarely mentioned.

Experience haz led me to the following ideas on this subject. Our bodies are so constituted that a large portion of the juices should be thrown off by insensible perspiration; nor can the process be abated without danger, nor wholly obstructed without occasioning diseese. The body must perspire, or must be out of order. A violent cold iz a sudden obstruction of the process, which throws the matter, intended for evacuation thro the pores of the skin, back upon the intestines, taking the word, not in a tecknical, but in its original extended sense. All that iz necessary to cure a cold, which iz not attended with symptoms of inflamation, iz to open the pores of the body; which may be done by bracing, az by drinking cold water, which excites circulation by its tonic power; or by relaxing the system, az by the warm bath and warm teas. The first wil answer, where the body haz vigor enough to giv the tonic its full effect; but iz not so efficacious, nor so generally practicable az the last. It iz not so eezy to force thro a wall, az to open a gate.

The common house-wifely remedies, consisting of butter or other oily substances, mixed with spirits, usually hav no effect upon a cold, or a bad one. Flannel, warm teas, or simple warm water, hav the best effect in relaxing; but if they fail of producing a perspiration, the patient should hav recourse to exercise. Dancing in a warm room, or other violent exercise, wil generally throw a person into a copious swet in a few minutes; and this, two or three times repeeted, wil usually releev the person, however obstinate the cold. If every thing else fails, the warm bath should be resorted to az an almost infallible remedy.

But there iz another species of obstructed perspiration more dangerous perhaps than sudden colds, because less perceptible; I meen, that which proceeds from a week habit of body. Whenever the tone of the vessels iz lost, the circulation of the blood becumes languid, the animal heet iz diminished, and the system haz not strength sufficient to throw off the perspirable matter. The consequence iz, the skin becumes dry and rigid, and the person usually feels a dull pain in hiz hed and the back part of hiz neck. Wimen, literary men, clerks, &c. are most expozed to theze symptoms. The remedy for them iz, free perspiration; but the most effectual remedy iz dancing, or other vigorous exercise, which increeses, at the same time, animal heet and the tone of the vessels. Dancing indeed unites to theze, the other advantage of cheerfulness and good spirits, which iz of singular use to persons accustomed to close application to bizziness or contemplation. The only caution to be obzerved iz, not to go into the cold air, without considerable additional clothing.

In cases where persons cannot hav recourse to dancing or other exercize in a warm room, the warm bath may be uzed to great advantage. At first thought, one would imagin, that the cold bath should be prescribed for giving tone to a week system; but on reflection, this would appeer to be generally, tho not always hazardous. The truth iz, a general relaxation of the body checks perspiration; and the first effect of cold, in such cases, iz to brace the exterior parts of the body, and throw the offending matter, lodged in the skin by the debility of the system, back upon the lungs, or other interior parts. If the system haz strength enough, or can receev enough by the operation of cold, to force open the pores and produce a copious perspiration, the cold bath wil hav an excellent effect. But when the person iz of a week frame, the experiment iz extremely dangerous. The safest remedy iz the warm bath, which remooves the obstructing matter by a gentle relaxation of the surface; thus enabling the vessels to recuver their tone, in a degree, and keep up a brisk circulation. The warm bath then iz the most safe and efficacious remedy for obstructed perspiration, occasioned by debility; and this iz an evil to which all sedentary peeple are expozed, and by which most of them suffer.

I hav been often suprized that the moderns hav so generally neglected the meens of prezerving helth, which were uzed by the ancients. A little attention to the structure of the human body, and the effect of heet and cold upon it, led the ancients to the obvious and almost infallable meens of garding themselves from diseeze. Their method waz to bathe almost daily; and then oil their bodies. By bathing, they kept their perspiration free, and their bodies of course, in vigor and clenly; and by the use of oil, they secured the body from the fatal effects of sudden cold. In the later ages of Rome, warm baths indeed became a luxury, and were uzed to excess; but this waz only an abuse of a good thing, the excellent effects of which had been experienced for ages. The neglect of the same meens, of preventing diseese, haz obliged the modern to hav recourse to physic, a substitute, more expensiv and trublesome, and not always effectual.167

Whether in bizziness or amusement, let your whole conduct be guided by temperance. Are you students? Eet moderately, and let your food be of the nutritiv kind, but not oily, high seesoned and indigestible. Drink but little, or rather no distilled liquors; wine and fermented liquors are much to be preferred. A good cup of tee, iz sometimes a cordial; coffee may be uzed freely; but the constant use of hot liquors seldom fails to debilitate the system and impair the digestiv powers.

Whether you reed or rite, accustom yourselves to stand at a high desk, rather than indulge an indolent habit of sitting, which always weekens, and sometimes disfigures the body. The neerer you can keep every part of the body to an eezy strait posture, the more equable wil be the circulation of the fluids; and in order to giv them the most unconstrained flow to the extremities of the lims, it iz very useful to loosen thoze parts of dress that bind the lims closely.

There iz another kind of temperance which I would warmly recommend; that iz, temperance in study. Little does a helthy robust yuth reflect upon the delicate texture of the nervous system, which iz immediately affected by close mental application. The full fed muscular man may spurn the caution, that warns him against the danger of hypocondriacs; but it iz next to impossible that the hard student, who clossets himself seven or eight hours a day, in deep meditation, should escape the deplorable evil, which makes men valetudinarians for life, without hope of a radical cure, and with the wretched consolation of being perpetually laughed at.

Four hours of uninterrupted study in a day iz generally sufficient to furnish the mind with az many ideas az can be retained, methodized and applied to practice; and it iz wel if one half of what are run over in this time are not lost. It may sometimes be necessary to study or reed more hours in a day; but it wil az often be found useful to reed less.

When you exercize at any diversion, or go into company, forget your studies, and giv up yourselves entirely to the amusement. It wil do you no good to leev your books behind, unless you dismiss your attention or train of thinking. Attend to experience. You find it very fateeging to stand, sit or even to lie in one fixed posture, for any length of time, and change affords releef. The same iz tru of the mind. It iz necessary, if I may indulge the expression, to change the pozition of the mind; that iz, vary the train of thought; for by a variety of ideas, the mind iz releeved, in the same degree az the body by a change of posture.

When you reed, always endevor to reed with some particular object. You wil find many books that ought to be red in course; but in general when you take up a treetis upon any science, or a volum of history, without a view to inform yourself of some particular in that wurk, you are not likely to retain what you reed. The object iz too general; the mind iz not capable of embracing the whole. For instance, if you reed Hume's England in course, with design to acquaint yourself with the whole story, you wil find, at the end of your labor, that you are able to recollect only a few of the most remarkable occurrences; the greatest part of the history haz escaped you. But if you confine yourself to one point of history at a time, for example, the life and policy of Alfred, or the account of Mary, queen of Scots, and reed what every author you can lay your hand on, haz said upon that subject, comparing their different accounts of it, you wil impress the history upon the mind, so az not to be eezily effaced. Law students should attend to theze remarks.

There iz another kind of temperance of more consequence than thoze mentioned, viz. temperance in plezure: For to all the personal evils of an excessiv indulgence of the animal appetite, we may add innumerable evils of a moral and social nature. No intercourse should take place between the sexes, til the body haz attained to full strength and maturity. In this respect, ancient barbarous nations hav set an example, that ought to make moderns blush for their effeminacy of manners, and their juvenile indulgences. The old Germans accounted it shameful and disreputable for yung men to hav any intercourse with the other sex, before the age of twenty.168 To this continence were they much indetted for their muscular bodies, their helth and longevity. But such an abstinence from plezure waz not maintained by law; the Germans knew that positiv prohibitions would be ineffectual to restrain this indulgence; they had recourse to the only certain method; they made it dishonorable. How different iz the case in modern times! So far iz debauchery from being scandalous, that it iz frequently the boast of men in the first offices of state; and a karacter of licentiousness iz little or no objection in a candidate for preferment.169

Oppozed to passion and to false pride, caution wil perhaps be unavailing. But men who wish for permanent happiness, should be persuaded to take the meens for securing it. Wil you then run the risk of erly indulgence in illicit plezure? Some of you may escape the evils which generally follow; but the chances are against you. In nine cases of ten, you wil destroy the vigor of your bodies, and thus impair the ability of enjoyment by excess; or what iz an additional evil, you wil contract diseese. What iz the consequence? Eether your taste for the vilest plezures wil grow into habit and make abandoned rakes of you, averse to the innocent enjoyments of the married life, and of course bad members of society; or you wil perhaps marry amiable wimen, with your strength and helth impaired, and your minds debauched, fickle, prone to jelousy. In this case, you are neether secure of your partners affections, nor wil you be likely to know the valu of their virtues. Having broken over the barriers of virtue, you are forever liable to stray; and the probability iz, you destroy the happiness of your wives, and the peece of your families. Perhaps with some art, and the forgiving temper of your wives, you may conceel the family discord, and the wretched state of your minds, from a censorious world; pride, reputation, every motiv would urge you to this precaution; but iz not this a poor substitute for happiness? A poor consolation for the multiplied evils that follow, in an endless train, from the unreezonable and criminal indulgences of a few yeers? You may be assured also that a woman of good principles cannot feel a pure satisfaction, in the company even of a reformed husband, when she reflects, az she frequently wil, that he haz wasted hiz helth and substance upon the vilest of her sex. My yung frends, it iz idle, it iz weekness and folly to expect any kind of happiness or plezure, which shal indemnify you for the trubble of seeking it, except in the pursuance of the principles which morality prescribes. Whenever you pursu an object, at the expense of any moral principle; when the attainment of your end must injure the person, the property, the reputation or the feelings of one child of Adam, the acquisition of that object wil not giv you happiness; you are pursuing a fantom. This leeds me to say something on one of the most hanous crimes a man can commit, and which the laws of society cannot or at leest do not punish; that iz, seduction.

Fashion, which iz often founded on moral propriety, and oftener on political convenience, iz sometimes an enemy to both; and public opinion, enlisted in the cauze of vice, iz a greater scurge to society than war or pestilence. It iz one of the evils, or rather of the curses of civilization, that certain crimes, az malignant in their nature, and az fatal in their consequence, az murder and robbery, becume fashionable, and to a certain degree, reputable. Of this kind, iz deliberate seduction. It iz az malignant in its nature az murder, for it iz accompanied with the same aggravation, malice pretense, or a premeditated design: It iz az fatal to society; for reputation iz az deer az life; and the wretched victims of deception, if they lay violent hands on themselves, or linger out a life of disgrace, are equally murdered, equally lost to society. And the only reezon why the seducer and the murderer hav not been placed on a footing by the laws of society, must be, the difficulty of proof, or of ascertaining the degrees of gilt, where there iz a possibility or a presumtion of assent on the part of the woman.

There are however certain instances of this crime which are az capable of proof az, arson, burglary or murder; and why the laws of a state, which prohibit under severe penalties, the taking or giving more than six per cent. interest on the loan of money, even on the fairest contract, should yet permit the seducer to take another's reputation, to doom to indelible infamy the helpless female, whoze reputation iz all her portion, iz one of thoze problems in society, which the philosopher wil impute to human imperfection, and the Kristian number among the inscrutable mysteries of providence.

But I am not addressing legislators; I am reezoning with individuals. Waving the baseness of the crime, let us attend to its consequences in families and society. You wil doutless acknowlege, for I do not see how you can deny, that when you deliberately commit a crime that affects your nabor, you explicitly admit that your nabor haz an equal right to commit the same crime against yourselves; for I presume no man wil arrogate to himself an exclusiv privilege of being a villan.

You attempt then to seduce the wife, the sister, or the dawter of your frend; but hav you none of theze relations? Hav you not a wife, a sister, a dawter, whoze reputation iz deer to you; whoze honor you would die to defend? You hav attacked the honor of your nabor; haz he not the same right to assail your family, in the same delicate point? But if you has none of theze neer connections, hav you no female frend whoze reputation iz deer to you? Now by attempting the honor of any woman, you wage war with the whole human race; you break down the barriers which nature and society hav established to gard your own family and frends, and leev their honor and happiness, and consequently your own, expozed to the intreegs of every unprincipled retch: You even invite an attempt upon your family and frends; you beet a challenge, and bid defiance to any man who haz the spirit to revenge the rongs of the helpless. Theze are serious considerations, in which men of principle and of no principle are equally interested; for an abandoned rake iz usually az fond of hiz own and hiz family's honor, az the man of the chastest life.

Mingle with your superiors in age and wizdom, whenever you can do it with propriety. If your parents are wize, they wil associate with you az much az possible in your amusements; they wil be cheerful and facetious, and thus make you az happy az you wish to be at home. A morose crabbed old man iz not inviting company for the yung and sprightly; and you ought rather to shun the illnatured, if possible. But whenever your parents are of a cheerful dispozition, and luv their children, they make the most agreeable and most useful companions. They wil find amusements for you at home, and you wil be happier there than any where else. If your parents are thus dispozed to make themselves your principal companions, always indulge their inclination. You wil thus avoid the contagion of vicious company, you wil form a habit of contentment and satisfaction at home; and remember, if you do not find happiness there, you wil never find much satisfaction abroad.

In choosing society however, be careful not to push yourself into company. Yung men are often impatient of the restraints which modesty and decorum impoze upon them. They are anxious to associate with thoze of greater age and rank than themselves; and expect more notis than mankind in general suppoze they dezerv. This proceeds from the ambition and fire of youth; the motivs I beleev to be often innocent and laudable; the ambition therefore should be guverned, rather than repressed. A little experience wil dictate patience and a modest deportment, which, with yeers and information, wil always ensure respectability. I once knew a man of twenty two chagrined even to petulence, becauze he could not be admitted a trustee of a college. I waz surprized at hiz severe remarks on the venerable body of gentlemen who rejected him. He thought himself a man of more science than some of the corporation; and therefore better qualified to direct a literary institution. Admit the fact, that he excelled in scientific attainments, yet the vexation he felt at hiz disappointment waz proof enough that he waz destitute of the first requisits in the overseers of yuth, coolness and judgement.

In the world, avoid every species of affectation, and be az fashionable az convenience wil warrant. Yet never be the first to invent novelty, nor run to excess in imitation. This advice, to be fashionable, should however be qualified, and restrained to things indifferent, in point of morality. Az the moral karacter of men does not depend on the shape of their garments, it iz generally best to wear our clothes in the model that fashion prescribes; unless your circumstances forbid, or the fashion itself iz inconvenient: For if you are not able to afford the expense, it iz criminal in you to follow the customs of the welthy; and if the shape of a garment makes it uneezy upon you or cumbersome, the fashion iz ridiculous, and none but week peeple, the common coxcombs and butterflies of the world, wil adopt it. For this reezon follow lord Chesterfield's maxims with great caution. His letters contain a strange compound of the best and worst instructions ever given to a yung man; indeed it would be expected of a man, whoze object waz not to make hiz son good, but to make him showy.