Part 14 (1/2)
Just one little lie to help me out of this difficulty; ”I won't count this” Just one little embezzlement; no one will know it, and I can return the ence; I won't count it, and a good night's sleep will hted; it won't reat difference, and, besides, I aht not to be counted
But,friend, it will be counted, whether you will or not; the deed has been recorded with an iron pen, even to the sel is no myth; it is found in ourselves Its naotten thousands of things until reat stimulus reproduces theraphs Sometimes all one's past life will seem to pass before hih unconsciously, passing before hihts he thinks, in the impulses that els are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still”
In a fable one of the Fates spun filaments so fine that they were invisible, and she beca, for she was bound to the spot by these very threads
Father Schoenmaker, missionary to the Indians, tried for years to i the wild tribes After fifteen years' labor he induced a chief to lay aside his blanket, the token of savagery; but he goes on to say, ”It took fifteen years to get it off, and just fifteen ists say that dark-colored stripes similar to those on the zebra reappear, after a hundred or a thousand generations, on the legs and shoulders of horses, asses, and e birds on sea islands where there are no beasts to ht
After a criminal's head had been cut off his breast was irritated, and he raised his hands several ti cause It was said that the cheek of Charlotte Corday blushed on being struck by a rude soldier after the head had been severed from the body
Humboldt found in South A creature that could speak a word of the language of a lost tribe The bird retained the habit of speech after his teachers had died
Caspar Hauser was confined, probably froht or sound from the outer world, could reach hi and chattering without reeable to his eyes; and, after the babbling youth had been taught to speak a feords, he begged to be taken back to the dungeon Only cold and disave pleasure to others gave his perverted senses only pain The sweetest uish to him, and he could eat only his black crust without violent vo
Deep in the very nature of animate existence is that principle of facility and inclination, acquired by repetition, which we call habit
Man becomes a slave to his constantly repeated acts In spite of the protests of his weakened will the trained nerves continue to repeat the acts even when the doer abhors them What he at first chooses, at last compels Man is as irrevocably chained to his deeds as the atoravitation You can as easily snatch a pebble frorasp as you can separate the minutest act of life from its inevitable effect upon character and destiny ”Children e Eliot, ”but deeds never, they have an indestructible life” The smirched youth becomes the tainted man
Practically all the achievements of the human race are but the accomplishments of habit We speak of the power of Gladstone to acco marvelous; but e analyze that poe find it cohty momentum has been rendered possible only by the law of the power of habit He is now a great bundle of habits, which all his life have been for His habit of industry no doubt was irksome and tedious at first, but, practiced so conscientiously and persistently, it has gained such , close, persistent, and strong, has made him a power He for to escape his attention, until he could observe more in half a day in London than a score of men who have eyes but see not Thus he has multiplied himself many times By this habit of accuracy he has avoidedhis lifetime, he has saved years of precious time, which many others, who marvel at his achievements, have throay
Gladstone early forht side of things, which, Sydney Sain has saved hiy, as he tells us he has never yet been kept awake a single hour by any debate or business in Parliay has wasted years ofthe econoht would transform the commonest life into harmony and beauty The will is almost omnipotent to determine habits which virtually are o a firs which tend to produce harht would produce happiness and contenthtly drilled, can drive out all discordant thoughts, and produce a reign of perpetual harmony Our trouble is that we do not half will After a man's habits are well set, about all he can do is to sit by and observe which way he is going Regret it as he hty cable of habit, twisted froht were absolutely within his control!
Drop a stone down a precipice By the law of gravitation it sinks with rapidly increasing momentum If it falls sixteen feet the first second, it will fall forty-eight feet the next second, and eighty feet the third second, and one hundred and forty-four feet the fifth second, and if it falls for ten seconds it will in the last second rush through three hundred and four feet till earth stops it Habit is cumulative
After each act of our lives we are not the same person as before, but quite another, better or worse, but not the sa added to, or deducted froht of character
”There is no fault nor folly of ainst me and take away ht, of understanding; and every past effort of ood in it, is with rasp of this hour and its vision”
”Many enius have written worse scrawls than I do,” said a boy at Rugby when his teacher remonstrated with him for his bad penmanshi+p; ”it is not worth while to worry about so trivial a fault” Ten years later, when he had becoible copy of an order caused the loss of ” was an ancient motto which is needed in our day
The folly of the child becomes the vice of the youth, and then the crime of the ht hundred and ninety-seven inmates of Auburn State Prison were there on a second visit What brings the prisoner back the second, third, or fourth time? It is habit which drives him on to commit the deed which his heart abhors and which his very soul loathes It is the momentuht, for there is a great difference between going just right and a little wrong It is the result of thatitself repeated again and again
When a wo from the effects of her husband's cruelty and debauchery from drink she asked hiain for the sake of their children to drink no ers, she made him promise her: ”Mary, I will drink no more till I take it out of this hand which I hold in ht he poured out a tumbler of brandy, stole into the room where she lay cold in her coffin, put the tumbler into her withered hand, and then took it out and drained it to the bottoh told this as a true story Hoerless a hty habit, which has robbed hi ambler who fell at the table in a fit of apoplexy, and his coan to bet upon his chances of recovery When the physician came they refused to let him bleed the man because they said it would affect the bet When President Garfield was hanging between life and death men bet heavily upon the issue, and even sold pools
No disease causes greater horror or dread than cholera; yet when it is once fastened upon a victim he is perfectly indifferent, and wonders at the solicitude of his friends His tears are dried; he cannot weep if he would His body is cold and clammy and feels like dead flesh, yet he tells you he is warm, and calls for ice water Have you never seen sier in those whose habits are already dragging the death?
Etherized by the fascinations of pleasure, we are often unconscious of pain while the devil aers, the feet and hands, or even the aruish that visits the sad heart when the lethe passes away, and the soul becomes conscious of virtue sacrificed, of manhood lost
The leper is often the last to suspect his danger, for the disease is painless in its early stages A leading lawyer and public official in the Sandwich Islands once overturned a lighted lamp on his hand, and was surprised to find that it caused no pain At last it dawned upon his ned his offices and went to the leper's island, where he died So sin in its early stages is not only painless but often even pleasant