ON LETTS’S DIARY.
Mine is one of your No.12 diaries, three shillings cloth boards;silk limp, gilt edges, three-and-six; French morocco, tuck ditto, four-and-six.It has two pages, ruled with faint lines for memoranda, for every week, and a ruled account at the end, for the twelve months from January to December, where you may set down your incomings and your expenses.I hope yours, my respected reader, are large; that there are many fine round sums of figures on each side of the page: liberal on the expenditure side, greater still on the receipt.I hope, sir, you will be "a better man," as they say, in '62 than in this moribund '61, whose career of life is just coming to its terminus.A better man in purse? in body? in soul's health?
Amen, good sir, in all.Who is there so good in mind, body or estate, but bettering won't still be good for him? O unknown Fate, presiding over next year, if you will give me better health, a better appetite, a better digestion, a better income, a better temper in '62 than you have bestowed in '61, I think your servant will be the better for the changes.For instance, I should be the better for a new coat.This one, I acknowledge, is very old.The family says so.My good friend, who amongst us would not be the better if he would give up some old habits? Yes, yes.You agree with me.You take the allegory? Alas! at our time of life we don't like to give up those old habits, do we? It is ill to change.
There is the good old loose, easy, slovenly bedgown, laziness, for example.What man of sense likes to fling it off and put on a tight guinde prim dress-coat that pinches him? There is the cozy wraprascal, self-indulgence--how easy it is! How warm! How it always seems to fit! You can walk out in it; you can go down to dinner in it.You can say of such what Tully says of his books:
Pernoctat nobiscum, peregrinatur, rusticatur.It is a little slatternly--it is a good deal stained--it isn't becoming--it smells of cigar-smoke; but, allons donc! let the world call me idle and sloven.I love my ease better than my neighbor's opinion.I live to please myself; not you, Mr.Dandy, with your supercilious airs.
1.am a philosopher.Perhaps I live in my tub, and don't make any other use of it--.We won't pursue further this unsavory metaphor;but, with regard to some of your old habits let us say--1.The habit of being censorious, and speaking ill of your neighbors.
2.The habit of getting into a passion with your man-servant, your maid-servant, your daughter, wife, &c.
3.The habit of indulging too much at table.
4.The habit of smoking in the dining-room after dinner.
5.The habit of spending insane sums of money in bric-a-brac, tall copies, binding, Elzevirs, &c.; '20 Port, outrageously fine horses, ostentatious entertainments, and what not? or,6.The habit of screwing meanly, when rich, and chuckling over the saving of half a crown, whilst you are poisoning your friends and family with bad wine.
7.The habit of going to sleep immediately after dinner, instead of cheerfully entertaining Mrs.Jones and the family: or,8.LADIES! The habit of running up bills with the milliners, and swindling paterfamilias on the house bills.
9.The habit of keeping him waiting for breakfast.
10.The habit of sneering at Mrs.Brown and the Miss Browns, because they are not quite du monde, or quite so genteel as Lady Smith.
11.The habit of keeping your wretched father up at balls till five o'clock in the morning, when he has to be at his office at eleven.
12.The habit of fighting with each other, dear Louisa, Jane, Arabella, Amelia.
13.The habit of ALWAYS ordering John Coachman, three-quarters of an hour before you want him.
SUCH habits, I say, sir or madam, if you have had to note in your diary of '61, I have not the slightest doubt you will enter in your pocket-book of '62.There are habits Nos.4 and 7, for example.Iam morally sure that some of us will not give up those bad customs, though the women cry out and grumble, and scold ever so justly.
There are habits Nos.9 and 13.I feel perfectly certain, my dear young ladies, that you will continue to keep John Coachman waiting;that you will continue to give the most satisfactory reasons for keeping him waiting: and as for (9), you will show that you once (on the 1st of April last, let us say,) came to breakfast first, and that you are ALWAYS first in consequence.
Yes; in our '62 diaries, I fear we may all of us make some of the '61 entries.There is my friend Freehand, for instance.(Aha!
Master Freehand, how you will laugh to find yourself here!) F.is in the habit of spending a little, ever so little, more than his income.He shows you how Mrs.Freehand works, and works (and indeed Jack Freehand, if you say she is an angel, you don't say too much of her); how they toil, and how they mend, and patch, and pinch; and how they CAN'T live on their means.And I very much fear--nay, Iwill bet him half a bottle of Gladstone 14s.per dozen claret--that the account which is a little on the wrong side this year, will be a little on the wrong side in the next ensuing year of grace.
