tainty which surprise us. He will add five or ten columns while we are adding one and not work half as hard as we do. A business man will run through a pile of a hundred letters, making a note on this one and a figure on that and assign them to different clerks to answer or record with wonderful rapidity and never make a mistake. Such men illustrate the value of habit. Give them something else to do and they will show no such facility.

Habit diminishes the time necessary for any given action. Compare the clumsy finger exercises of a beginner on the piano with the performance of a skilled pianist; compare the time the child spends over his first written words with the rapid writing of a college boy in taking notes of a lecture. As Maudsley says: "If an act became no easier after being done several times, no progress could be made. The washing of his hands or the fastening of a button

would be as difficult for a man as for a child." We may rejoice, then, that "man is a bundle of habits," for his habits multiply his powers a hundredfold.

The discipline of education consists largely in the formation of habits. The Duke of Wellington, referring to the familiar proverb concerning habit, exclaimed: "Habit a second nature! Habit is ten times nature." Wellington was himself a fine illustration of habit and we can easily see how such a man, relying upon his trusted soldiers, might think so. The daily drill and the years of discipline completely fashion a man over again.

Habits are of various kinds, physical, mental and moral, though many habits involve both mental and moral activities. Examples of bodily habits are peculiarities of gait or gesture, or skill in using some tool, as a saw or hammer, or an engraver's chisel. A child accidentally or by imitation falls into some peculiarity

of speech and soon finds it fastened upon him as a fixed habit, difficult or impossible to overcome. Or he may fail at the proper age to acquire the distinct articulation of certain sounds—that is, to get his vocal apparatus to do its full work — and so he will always lisp, or have some other peculiarity of speech. In the same way people form their own individual handwriting, almost as characteristic as their faces, the result of habit. V

Manners are habits. A courteous bearing is not merely the expression of the man for the moment; it is the record of his attitude of mind for years. If he would enter a room or say good-morning gracefully, he must do it unconsciously. We cannot do anything well till we can do it without thinking. Thus a boy does not really know how to swim till he can swim. Complete knowledge in many such things implies an established habit. Our education and experience ought to train us to make as many

useful actions as possible habitual and automatic. The details of our daily life. usually follow a routine. People sometimes regret this, but we are fortunate that it is so. Why should we waste our energies in deciding the same questions every day? The good old maxim, “a time and a place for everything" is the crystallization of a hundred good habits. Who is more miserable than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision?

In one of Professor Huxley's books the story is told of a discharged soldier who was so accustomed to the military drill that he would always suit the action to the word of command. One day, a wag who saw him carrying home his dinner called out "Attention!" Whereupon the soldier instantly brought his hands down and dropped his mutton and potatoes in the gutter! When a pupil begins to play the violin, a book is often placed under his right armpit which he

is to hold fast by keeping the upper arm tight against his body. This prevents his swinging his elbow awkwardly as he plays. In the same way, mechanical devices are employed to prevent bad habits or mannerisms in the young pianist, singer and speaker.

Habit implies an accumulation of energy by repeated actions till a mental faculty or a bodily organ is predisposed or heldhabitus-to act in a certain manner. The mind repeats its activities with a constant tendency to perform each process in the same way it has acted before and with a constantly increasing facility. Habit steadies and gives strength. It gives momentum and finish to every act. We have truly learned not that which we can be examined upon, but that which has been absorbed into our habits of thought. A boy begins to be a gentleman by remembering to perform certain courtesies; he really is one when these acts become so habitual that he performs them uncon