In regard to selecting your companions, remember the Word of God, “He that walketh with the wise shall be wise, but the companion of fools shall be destroyed.” There is nothing that so much influences our character and happiness, as the companions we associate with, and therefore it is of the utmost consequence that you find your associates among the most respectable, amiable, and conscientious persons, and that you shun the society of the gay, thoughtless and unprincipled.
There is another point where domestics feel that their employers have no right to control, and this still more demands your attention, in order that you may do what is right and best for yourselves. I refer to the frequent attendance on evening meetings, and the late hours which are sometimes the consequence of this. Now what I wish you to reflect on, in reference to this, I can best exhibit by relating another story.
Once there was a very good king, and he had a large residence at some distance from his court. At this residence there was a large household of servants, whose business it was to keep it in constant readiness, so that whenever the king wished, he could go there and find every thing in order.
Now these servants were very apt to be careless and negligent of their business, and often became so engrossed in their own amusements, that they forgot entirely the business they were placed there to do. In consequence of this, the king used often to send messengers to them, who would strive to keep them in order, and who wrote down in a book the rules that should guide them in the performance of every duty. But there still continued great havoc, waste and misrule. At last the only son of the king, who was a very tender-hearted prince, and loved these servants very much, came among them; for he feared that unless something was done, when his father arrived, they would all be turned away, and become miserably poor and wretched. So this excellent prince came and staid a long time with these servants; he worked with them himself, and showed them by his own example, the right way of doing every thing; and then he wrote down the rules in a book, and placed it so that every one could go to it and learn their duties.