Habits and Amusements : Part 4

Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness
by John Mather Austin

(Page 7 of 10)

"Inordinate expenditure is the cause of a great share of the crime and consequent misery which devastate the world. The clerk who spends more than he earns, is fast qualifying himself for a gambler and a thief; the trader or mechanic who overruns his income, is very certain to become in time a trickster and a cheat. Wherever you see a man spending faster than he earns, there look out for villainy to be developed, though it be the farthest thing possible from his present thought.

"When the world shall have become wiser, and its standard of morality more lofty, it will perceive and affirm that profuse expenditure, even by one who can pecuniarily afford it, is pernicious and unjustifiable - that a man, however wealthy, has no right to lavish on his own appetites, his tastes, or his ostentation, that which might have raised hundreds from destitution and despair to comfort and usefulness. But that is an improvement in public sentiment which must be waited for, while the other is more ready and obvious.

"The meanness, the dishonesty, the iniquity, of squandering thousands unearned, and keeping others out of money that is justly theirs, have rarely been urged and enforced as they should be. They need but to be considered and understood, to be universally loathed and detested."

Nearly allied with the Habits of the young, are their Amusements. That the youthful should be allowed a reasonable degree of recreation, is universally admitted. The laws of health demand relaxation from the labors and cares of life. The body, the mind, constantly strained to the highest exertion, without repose, and something to cheer, refreshen, and re-invigorate it, will speedily fall into disease and death. The very word recreation - (re-creation) - indicates that to a degree, proper amusement has the power to revive the wearied energies, supply afresh the springs of life, and give a renewed elasticity and endurance to all the capacities of our nature.

Yet there is no subject surrounded with greater difficulties, than the amusements of the youthful. There is no amusement, however harmless and proper in its nature, but what can be carried to such excess, as to inflict deep injury. It is while searching for recreations, that the youthful meet the most dangerous temptations, and fall into the most vicious practices. How important that they should make this a matter of mature reflection and acute discrimination. Pleasure we all desire. It is sought for by every human being. But it is essential to distinguish between true pleasure, which we can enjoy with real benefit, and false pleasure, which deceives, demoralizes, and destroys. The poet truly describes the nature of this distinction, when he says,

"Pleasure, or wrong, or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good!"

One of the first things requisite to be understood is, that in order to enjoy any amusement, a previous preparation is necessary. That preparation is to be obtained by useful occupation. It is only by contrast that we can enjoy anything. - Without weariness, we can know nothing of rest. Without first enduring hunger and thirst, we cannot experience the satisfaction of partaking of food and drink. In like manner, it is only by faithful and industrious application to business of some kind - it is only by occupying the mind in useful employment - that we can draw any satisfaction from recreation. Without this preparation, all amusement loses its charm. Were the young to engage in one unceasing round of pastimes, from day to day, with no time or thought devoted to useful occupation, recreation would soon be divested of its attractions, and become insipid and painfully laborious. To be beneficial, amusements should be virtuous in their tendencies, healthful in their influence on the body, and of brief duration.

Among the many pastimes to which the young resort for amusement, card-playing often fills a prominent place. This is a general, and in some circles, a fashionable practice; but it is objectionable and injurious in all its influences, and in every possible point of view. Nothing good or instructive, nothing elevating or commendable, in any sense, can come from it. All its fruits must necessarily be evil.

It is a senseless occupation. Nothing can be more unmeaning and fruitless, among all the employments to which a rational mind can devote its attention. It affords no useful exercise of the intellect - no food for profitable thought - no power to call into activity the higher and better capacities. It is true, I suppose, there is some degree of cunning and skill to be displayed in managing the cards. But what high intellectual, or moral capacity is brought into exercise by a game so trivial? It excludes interesting and instructive interchanges of sentiment; on topics of any degree of importance; and substitutes talk of a frivolous and meaningless character. To a spectator, the conversation of a card-table, is of the most uninteresting and childish description.

There are, however, more serious objections than these. Card-playing has a tendency of the most dangerous description, especially to the youthful. Let a young man become expert in this game, and fond of engaging in it, and who does not see he is liable to become that most mean and despicable of all living creatures - a GAMBLER. Confident of his own skill as a card-player, how long would he hesitate to engage in a game for a small sum? He has seen older ones playing - perhaps his own parents - and he can discover no great harm in doing the same thing even if it is for a stake of a few shillings. From playing for small sums, the steps are very easy which lead to large amounts. And in due time, the young man becomes a gambler, from no other cause than that he acquired a love for card-playing, when he engaged in it only as an amusement.

Parents have a responsibility resting on them in this respect, of which they should not lose sight. They cannot be surprised that their children imitate their examples. With all the dangerous associations and tendencies of card-playing, would they have their children acquire a passion for it? What wise parent can make such a choice for his son? Ah, how many a young man has become a gamester, a black-leg, an inmate of the prison cell, because, in the home of his childhood, he acquired a love of the card-table. He but imitated the practice of parents, whose duty it was to set him a better example, and was led to the path of ruin!

Derby, Miller, and Company, 1851