Practice temperance before you counsel it.

From Alfred’s journal

The feeder by the blue house was full again this morning, and I ate from it until I could barely get to the fence post. Then I sat up there with my feathers out and watched Switch bury his fourth walnut of the hour, and I told him he would forget where half of them were. He said, through the walnut, that I had sunflower hulls stuck to my chest. For years I thought the useful thing was knowing the right amount; I was fluent in the right amount, I could have given a lecture on it from a branch. Practice temperance before you counsel it, I wrote, and then went back to the feeder, because the wind was turning cold and the seed was not going to last.