Letters from a Father to His Son

SELF-DENIAL
London, October 25th, 1848.
My dear son,
I have written to you a letter about speaking the truth, and being
guided by truth, candor, and honesty in all your words and
actions, and I am now going to write to you about self-denial. I
hope you attend to what I write, and think of it continually.
It would be in vain for me to give you the benefit of my
experience and opinion, if you did not carefully read and reflect
upon my words. They are not light words, to be forgotten like a
fairy tale—but serious and important words, every one of them
to be stored in your memory, and never lost sight or recollection
of during your life.
What I tell you is what I know myself to be true. You will find, in
the course of your education, and of your reading, as you grow
older, that there are some things nay, I may say, many things—as
to which wise and good men differ in opinion. In my letters to
you, when I speak of such matters, I shall inform you that this
difference of opinion exists. For the present I am confining my
advice to you to plain and acknowledged truths, about which
there can be, among wise and good men, no difference of
opinion.
You know the meaning of self-denial. The words, indeed, explain
their own meaning. The time to begin self-denial is when we are
young. If young people are indulged in every wish—if they have
only to ask and have—if, without reference to whether the object
of their desires is good or bad for their minds or bodies; those
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