he happens to fail is made of weak material. There is not much in him.

"What's brave, what's noble, let's do it after the high Roman fashion, and make death proud to take us."

Defeat is only a temporary incident with those who are bound to win. They never think of regarding it as final. They look upon it as a mere slip, and they get up with renewed resolution, more determined than ever to go on.

TAKING HABIT INTO

PARTNERSHIP

Habit tends to make us permanently what we are for the moment.

The great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.

For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.

In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.

Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.

Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain.—Professor William James.

A

FRIEND of General Grant's, in a maga

zine article, relates the following conversation he had with him while sitting at the campfire late one night, after every one else had gone to bed.

"General, it seems singular that you have gone through all the tumble of army service and frontier life and have never been provoked into swearing. I have never heard you utter an oath or use an imprecation."

"Well, somehow or other, I never learned to swear," he replied. "When a boy I seemed to have an aversion to it, and when I became a man I saw the folly of it. I have always noticed, too, that swearing helps to rouse a man's anger, and when a man flies into a passion his adversary who keeps cool always gets the better of him. In fact, I never could see the use of swearing.

"I think it is the case with many people who swear excessively that it is a mere habit, and that they do not mean to be profane; but to say the least, it is a great waste of time."

Every child born into the world is a physical, mental, and moral machine,—a habit machine. The will power is the superintendent of this marvelous mechanism, infinite in its possibilities, by which one can manufacture almost anything he pleases. Unlike rigid machinery of iron, steel, or brass, which can repeat only the same thing over and over again, the human machine, in childhood, is plastic, soft and pliable, and the patterns for what it is to manufacture are made up as the superintendent proceeds. By repeating acts thousands of times we build into the brain habits or tendencies which the thought follows, because it is so much easier to go the way it has been going for years than to make new tracks.

One department of the mechanism may be made to follow the lines of accuracy, another of truthfulness, another of industry, another of economy,

another of promptness, another of decision, another of politeness, another of courage, and so on. If the superintendent persists in an exacting, painstaking, careful manner of working until the delicate tracings of the pattern set for it by parent or teacher have become fixed in the soft mechanism of the brain and nerve tissues, until he has gained the power and facility which comes from constant repetition, then it will become comparatively easy for him to work out a character in some measure approaching an ideal manhood.

But if, instead of the lines of accuracy and order, he allows the lines of inaccuracy and slovenliness; if, instead of truthfulness, he trades lies and prevarications; if he cultivates cowardice instead of courage; if, instead of straight forwardness, there is dodging, shifting; if, instead of enthusiasm, there is indifference; if, instead of self-respect and selfconfidence, there is a trace of slinking and selfdepreciation, he will soon find that evil characteristics have crept in and that he is capable only of continuous repetitions of evil.

"Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere bundles of habits," said Professor William James, "they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself from every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time.' Well, he may not

count it, and a kind heaven may not count it, but it is being counted none the less. Down among the nerve cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes."

"

A man is often shocked when he suddenly discovers that he is considered a liar. He never dreamed of forming such a habit; but the little misrepresentations to gain some temporary end, have, before he has realized it, made a beaten track in the nerve and brain tissue, until lying has become almost a physical necessity. He is bound to his habit with cords of steel; and only by painful, watchful, and careful repetition of the exact truth, with a special effort of the will power at each act, can he form a counter trunk line in the nerve and brain tissue.

Society is often shocked by the criminal act of a man who has always been considered upright and true. But if they could examine the habit map in his nervous mechanism and brain they would find in the tiny repetitions of what he regarded as trivial acts, the beginnings of a path leading directly to his deed. All expert and technical education is built upon the theory that these trunk lines of habit become more and more sensitive to their accustomed stimuli, and respond more and more readily.

We are apt to overlook the physical basis of habit. Every repetition of an act makes us more likely to perform that act, and discovers in our