68. HABIT. Knowledge excites our curiosity, experience enlarges and corrects our knowledge, and habits render us fit for acting with instantaneous promptitude and readiness. The acquisition of good habits- of such habits as shall free us from the need of lengthy consideration before acting when emergencies occur-we proclaim as one of the great uses of self-culture. -SAMUEL NEIL. Habit will reconcile us to everything, but change, and even to change, if it recur not too quickly. Habit is second nature. -COLTON. -MONTAIGNE. Habits are a necklace of pearls; untie the knot and the whole unthreads. -A RUSSIAN WRITER. Industry doth beget ease by procuring good habits and facility of acting things expedient for us to do. -BARROW. It is the business of the honourable man to use the utmost diligence in forming habits; principles being fixed, right conduct will follow of itself.* From Marshman's Works of Confucius. --CONFUCIUS. Ill habits gather by unseen degrees, As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. -DRYDEN. We are all, in a great measure, the creatures of habit. That which at first was a matter of indifference, by long use becomes absolutely essential to our comfort. How important, then, that we should guard against such habits as may in any degree be evil, or lead to evil; or which cannot be practised without inconvenience to ourselves or others! Some habits are needlessly expensive; others are injurious in their physical or moral tendency. Perhaps at first they were thoughtlessly indulged in a mere frolic or bravado; but by degrees, they became interwoven with the very constitution, and hold it with the force of an irresistible chain, and with the corrosiveness of deadly poison. Sound discretion will guard against the first experiment. To a failure in discretion and resolution in this respect, may be traced the ruin of ten thousand inveterate drunkards, to say nothing of the influence of other habits equally pernicious. "DOMESTIC LIFE." The ill may go, but the habit will stick. -KASHMIRI PROVERB. Habit is a cable. We weave threads of it everyday, and at last we cannot break it. A dog's tail will not become straight. -PERSIAN PROVERB. It is a folly to expect to break off a habit in a day, which has been gathering long years. A habit, deep seated, that has entered into the vitals of life, would cost more anguish to dispel from its old abode, past resuscitation, than would tearing out the eye from its socket; and would call for our best energies and require a will wound up to the highest pitch for that purpose. "THEOSOPHIST.” Habit is hard to overcome. If you take off the first letter it does not change "a bit". If you take another, you still have a "bit" left. If you take off still another, the whole of "it" remains. If you take off another it is not "t" totally used up. All of which goes to show that if you wish to be rid of a habit, you must throw it off altogether. It is more appropriate to say that our every day habits are at fault than to find fault with the times. -JAIN PRECEPT. How shall I a habit break? As you did that habit make, As you gathered, you must lose; Thread by thread the strand we twist, -JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. The late Sir George Staunton informed me, that he had visited a man in India, who had committed a murder, and, in order not only to save his life, but what was of much more consequence, his caste, he submitted to the penalty imposed; this was, that he should sleep for seven years on a bedstead, without any mattress, the whole surface of which was studded with points of iron resembling nails, but not so sharp as to penetrate the flesh. Sir George saw him in the fifth year of his probation, and his skin was then like the hide of a rhinoceros, but more callous; at that time, however, he could sleep comfortably on his "bed of thorns," and remarked, that at the expiration of the term of his sentence, he should most probably continue that system from choice, which he had been obliged to adopt from necessity. EIGHT GOLDEN HABITS. 1. Be frugal not mean. 2. Be prudent not subtle. -COLTON. 3. Be complaisant not servile. 4. Be active in business but not its slave. There are also four other habits which are essentially necessary to the happy management of temporal concerns. These are punctuality, accuracy, steadiness and despatch. LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION. A gentleman once advertised for a boy to assist him in his office, and nearly fifty applied for the place. Out of the whole number he in a short time chose one, and sent all the rest away. "I should like to know," said a friend, "on what ground you chose that boy. He had not a single recommendation with him." "You are mistaken," said the gentleman; "he had a great many : 1. "He wiped his feet when he came in, and closed the door after him; showing that he was orderly and tidy. 2. "He gave up his seat instantly to that lame old man; showing that he was kind and thought ful. 3. "He took off his cap when he came in and answered my questions promptly and respectfully; showing that he was polite. 4. "He lifted up the book which I had purposely laid on the floor, and placed it on the table, while all the rest stepped over it, or shoved it aside; showing that he was careful. 5. "And he waited quietly for his turn, instead of pushing the others aside; showing that he was modest. 6. "When I talked with him, I noticed that his 66 clothes were carefully brushed, his hair in nice order, and his teeth as white as milk. When he wrote his name, I observed that his fingernails were clean, instead of being tipped with jet, like the handsome little fellow's in the blue jacket. Don't you call these things letters of recommendation? I do; and what I can tell about a boy by using my eyes for ten minutes, is worth more than all the fine letters he can bring me.' "ROYAL READERS, No. 3." |