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The fact is that I had acquired an almost monastic habit of mind and loved the conquest of my impulses much as the athlete loves the subjection of his muscles to the demands of his will. In my commonplace book for 1871 I find transcribed two quotations that governed me. The one is from Dr. Hall’s “Happy Old Age” and runs:

Stimulants ... are the greatest enemies of mankind; there is no middle ground which anyone can safely tread, only that of total and most uncompromising abstinence.

The other is from a sermon of Dr. Channing on “Self-Denial.”

Young man, remember that the only test of goodness is moral strength, self-decrying energy.... Do you subject to your moral and religious convictions the love of pleasure, the appetites, the passions, which form the great trials of youthful virtue? No man who has made any observation of life but will tell you how often he has seen the promise of youth blasted ... honorable feeling, kind affection overpowered and almost extinguished ... through a tame yielding to pleasure and the passions.