SOWING AND REAPING.
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that
shall he also reap.--GALATIANS.
Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a
character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.--G. D. BOARDMAN.
Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.--POPE.
How use doth breed a habit in a man.--SHAKESPEARE.
All habits gather, by unseen degrees,
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
DRYDEN.
Infinite good comes from good habits which must result from the common
influence of example, intercourse, knowledge, and actual
experience--morality taught by good morals.--PLATO.
The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt till they are
too strong to be broken.--SAMUEL JOHNSON.
Man is first startled by sin; then it becomes pleasing, then easy, then
delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed. Then man is
impenitent, then obstinate, then he is damned.--JEREMY TAYLOR.
"Rogues differ little. Each began as a disobedient son."
In the great majority of things, habit is a greater plague than ever
afflicted Egypt.--JOHN FOSTER.
You cannot in any given case, by any sudden and single effort, will to
be true if the habit of your life has been insincere.--F. W. ROBERTSON.
The tissue of the life to be,
We weave with colors all our own;
And in the field of destiny,
We reap as we have sown.
WHITTIER.
"Gentlemen of the jury, you will now consider your verdict," said the
great lawyer, Lord Tenterden, as he roused from his lethargy a moment,
and then closed his eyes forever. "Tête d'armée" (head of the army),
murmured Napoleon faintly; and then, "on the wings of a tempest that
raged with unwonted fury, up to the throne of the only power that
controlled him while he lived, went the fiery soul of that wonderful
warrior." "Give Dayrolles a chair," said the dying Chesterfield with
his old-time courtesy, and the next moment his spirit spread its wings.
"Young man, keep your record clean," thrilled from the lips of John B.
Gough as he sank to rise no more. What power over the mind of man is
exercised by the dominant idea of his life "that parts not quite with
parting breath!" It has shaped his purpose throughout his earthly
career, and he passes into the Great Unknown, moving in the direction
of his ideal; impelled still, amid the utter retrocession of the vital
force, by all the momentum resulting from his weight of character and
singleness of aim.
* * * * * *
[Illustration: VICTOR HUGO]
"Every one is the son of his own works."
"Cast forth thy act, thy word, into the ever-living, ever-working
universe: it is seed-grain that cannot die."
* * * * * *
"It is a beautiful arrangement in the mental and
moral economy of our nature, that that which is performed as a duty
may, by frequent repetitions, become a habit, and the habit of stern
virtue, so repulsive to others, may hang around the neck like a wreath
of flowers."
Cholera appeared mysteriously in Toulon, and, after a careful
examination, the medical inspectors learned that the first victims were
two sailors on the Montebello, a government transport, long out of
service, anchored at the entrance to the port. For many years the
vessel had been used for storing old, disused military equipments.
Some of these had belonged to French soldiers who had died before
Sebastopol. The doctors learned that the two poor sailors were seized,
suddenly and mortally, a few days after displacing a pile of equipments
stored deep in the hold of the Montebello. The cholera of Toulon came
in a direct line from the hospital of Varna. It went to sleep,
apparently gorged, on a heap of the cast-off garments of its victims,
to awaken thirty years later to victorious and venomous life.
Professor Bonelli, of Turin, punctured an animal with the tooth of a
rattlesnake. The head of this serpent had lain in a dry state for
sixteen years exposed to the air and dust, and, moreover, had
previously been preserved more than thirty years in spirits of wine.
To his great astonishment an hour afterward the animal died. So
habits, good or bad, that have been lost sight of for years will spring
into a new life to aid or injure us at some critical moment, as kernels
of wheat which had been clasped in a mummy's hand four thousand years
sprang into life when planted. They only awaited moisture, heat,
sunlight, and air to develop them.
In Jefferson's play, Rip Van Winkle, after he had "sworn off," at every
invitation to drink said, "Well, this time don't count." True, as
Professor James says, he may not have counted it, as thousands of
others have not counted it, and a kind heaven may not count it, but it
is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibres
the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used
against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is in
strict scientific literalness wiped out. There is a tendency in the
nervous system to repeat the same mode of action at regularly recurring
intervals. Dr. Combe says that all nervous diseases have a marked
tendency to observe regular periods. "If we repeat any kind of mental
effort at the same hour daily, we at length find ourselves entering
upon it without premeditation when the time approaches."
"The great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our
ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our
acquisition, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this
we must make automatic and habitual, as soon as possible, as many
useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that
are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we would guard against the
plague."
The nervous system is a living phonograph, infinitely more marvelous
than that of Edison. No sound, however feeble, however slight, can
escape being recorded in its wonderful mechanism. Although the
molecules of this living machine may all be entirely changed many times
during a lifetime, yet these impressions are never erased or lost.
They become forever fixed in the character. Like Rip Van Winkle, the
youth may say to himself, I will do this just once "just to see what it
is like," no one will ever know it, and "I won't count this time." The
country youth says it when he goes to the city. The young man says it
when he drinks "just to be social." Americans, who are good church
people at home, say it when in Paris and Vienna. Yes, "just to see
what it is like" has ruined many a noble life. Many a man has lost his
balance and fallen over the precipice into the sink of iniquity while
just attempting "to see what it was like." "If you have been pilot on
these waters twenty-five years," said a young man to the captain of a
steamer, "you must know every rock and sandbank in the river." "No, I
don't, but I know where the deep water is."
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 money before it will be needed. Just one little indulgence;
I won't count it, and a good night's sleep will make me all right
again. Just one small part of my work slighted; it won't make any
great difference, and, besides, I am usually so careful that a little
thing like this ought not to be counted.
But, my young friend, it will be counted, whether you will or not; the
deed has been recorded with an iron pen, even to the smallest detail.
The Recording Angel is no myth; it is found in ourselves. Its name is
Memory, and it holds everything. We think we have forgotten thousands
of things until mortal danger, fever, or some other great stimulus
reproduces them to the consciousness with all the fidelity of
photographs. Sometimes all one's past life will seem to pass before
him in an instant; but at all times it is really, although
unconsciously, passing before him in the sentiments he feels, in the
thoughts he thinks, in the impulses that move him apparently without
cause.
"Our acts our angels 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 became a victim of her cunning, for she was bound to
the spot by these very threads.
Father Schoenmaker, missionary to the Indians, tried for years to
implant civilization among 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 minutes to get it on him again."
Physiologists 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 mules. Large birds on sea islands
where there are no beasts to molest them lose the power of flight.
After a criminal's head had been cut off his breast was irritated, and
he raised his hands several times as if to brush away the exciting
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 America a parrot which was the only living
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 from birth, in a dungeon where no
light or sound from the outer world, could reach him. At seventeen he
was still a mental infant, crying and chattering without much apparent
intelligence. When released, the light was disagreeable to his eyes;
and, after the babbling youth had been taught to speak a few words, he
begged to be taken back to the dungeon. Only cold and dismal silence
seemed to satisfy him. All that gave pleasure to others gave his
perverted senses only pain. The sweetest music was a source of anguish
to him, and he could eat only his black crust without violent vomiting.
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 atoms are
chained by gravitation. You can as easily snatch a pebble from
gravitation's grasp as you can separate the minutest act of life from
its inevitable effect upon character and destiny. "Children may be
strangled," says George 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
accomplish so much in a day as something marvelous; but when we analyze
that power we find it composed very largely of the results of habit.
His mighty 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 forming. His habit of industry no doubt was irksome and
tedious at first, but, practiced so conscientiously and persistently,
it has gained such momentum as to astonish the world. His habit of
thinking, close, persistent, and strong, has made him a power. He
formed the habit of accurate, keen observation, allowing nothing 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
avoided many a repetition; and so, during his lifetime, he has saved
years of precious time, which many others, who marvel at his
achievements, have thrown away.
Gladstone early formed the habit of cheerfulness, of looking on the
bright side of things, which, Sydney Smith says, "is worth a thousand
pounds a year." This again has saved him enormous waste of energy, as
he tells us he has never yet been kept awake a single hour by any
debate or business in Parliament. This loss of energy has wasted years
of many a useful life, which might have been saved by forming the
economizing habit of cheerfulness.
The habit of happy thought would transform the commonest life into
harmony and beauty. The will is almost omnipotent to determine habits
which virtually are omnipotent. The habit of directing a firm and
steady will upon those things which tend to produce harmony of thought
would produce happiness and contentment even in the most lowly
occupations. The will, rightly 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 may, how helpless is a weak man bound by the mighty cable of habit,
twisted from the tiny threads of single acts which he thought 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 same. There has been
something added to, or deducted from, our weight of character.
"There is no fault nor folly of my life," said Ruskin; "that does not
rise against me and take away my joy, and shorten my power of
possession, of sight, of understanding; and every past effort of my
life, every gleam of righteousness or good in it, is with me now to
help me in my grasp of this hour and its vision."
"Many men of genius have written worse scrawls than I do," said a boy
at Rugby when his teacher remonstrated with him for his bad penmanship;
"it is not worth while to worry about so trivial a fault." Ten years
later, when he had become an officer in the Crimea, his illegible copy
of an order caused the loss of many brave men.
"Resist beginning" 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 man.
In 1880 one hundred and forty-seven of the eight 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 momentum made
up from a thousand deviations from the truth and right, for there is a
great difference between going just right and a little wrong. It is
the result of that mysterious power which the repeated act has of
getting itself repeated again and again.
When a woman was dying from the effects of her husband's cruelty and
debauchery from drink she asked him to come to her bedside, and pleaded
with him again for the sake of their children to drink no more.
Grasping his hand with her thin, long fingers, she made him promise
her: "Mary, I will drink no more till I take it out of this hand which
I hold in mine." That very night 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
bottom. John B. Gough told this as a true story. How powerless a man
is in the presence of a mighty habit, which has robbed him of
will-power, of self-respect, of everything manly, until he becomes its
slave!
Walpole tells of a gambler who fell at the table in a fit of apoplexy,
and his companions began 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
similar insensibility to danger in those whose habits are already
dragging them to everlasting death?
Etherized by the fascinations of pleasure, we are often unconscious of
pain while the devil amputates the fingers, the feet and hands, or even
the arms and legs of our character. But oh, the anguish 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 mind that he was a leper. He resigned 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.
The hardening, deadening power of depraving habits and customs was
strikingly illustrated by the Romans.
Under Nero, the taste of the people had become so debauched and morbid
that no mere representation of tragedy would satisfy them. Their
cold-blooded selfishness, the hideous realism of "a refined, delicate,
aesthetic age," demanded that the heroes should actually be killed on
the stage. The debauched and sanguinary Romans reckoned life worthless
without the most thrilling experiences of horror or delight. Tragedy
must be genuine bloodshed, comedy, actual shame. When "The
Conflagration" was represented on the stage they demanded that a house
be actually burned and the furniture plundered. When "Laureolus" was
played they demanded that the actor be really crucified and mangled by
a bear, and he had to fling himself down and deluge the stage with his
own blood. Prometheus must be really chained to his rock, and Dirce in
very fact be tossed and gored by the wild bull, and Orpheus be torn to
pieces by a real bear, and Icarus was compelled to fly, even though it
was known he would be dashed to death. When the heroism of "Mucius
Scaevola" was represented, a real criminal was compelled to thrust his
hand into the flame without a murmur, and stand motionless while it was
being burned. Hercules was compelled to ascend the funeral pyre, and
there be burned alive. The poor slaves and criminals were compelled to
play their parts heroically until the flames enveloped them.
The pirate Gibbs, who was executed in New York, said that when he
robbed the first vessel his conscience made a hell in his bosom; but
after he had sailed for years under the black flag, he could rob a
vessel and murder all the crew, and lie down and sleep soundly. A man
may so accustom himself to error as to become its most devoted slave,
and be led to commit the most fearful crimes in order to defend it, or
to propagate it.
When Gordon, the celebrated California stage-driver, was dying, he put
his foot out of the bed and swung it to and fro. When asked why he did
so, he replied, "I am on the down grade and cannot get my foot on the
brake."
In our great museums you see stone slabs with the marks of rain that
fell hundreds of years before Adam lived, and the footprint of some
wild bird that passed across the beach in those olden times. The
passing shower and the light foot left their prints on the soft
sediment; then ages went on, and the sediment hardened into stone; and
there the prints remain, and will remain forever. So the child, so
soft, so susceptible to all impressions, so joyous to receive new
ideas, treasures them all up, gathers them all into itself, and retains
them forever.
A tribe of Indians attacked a white settlement and murdered the few
inhabitants. A woman of the tribe, however, carried away a very young
infant, and reared it as her own. The child grew up with the Indian
children, different in complexion, but like them in everything else.
To scalp the greatest possible number of enemies was, in his view, the
most glorious thing in the world. While he was still a youth he was
seen by some white traders, and by them conducted back to civilized
life. He showed great relish for his new life, and especially a strong
desire for knowledge and a sense of reverence which took the direction
of religion, so that he desired to become a clergyman. He went through
his college course with credit, and was ordained. He fulfilled his
function well, and appeared happy and satisfied. After a few years he
went to serve in a settlement somewhere near the seat of war which was
then going on between Britain and the United States, and before long
there was fighting not far off. He went forth in his usual
dress--black coat and neat white shirt and neckcloth. When he returned
he was met by a gentleman of his acquaintance, who was immediately
struck by an extraordinary change in the expression of his face and the
flush on his cheek, and also by his unusually shy and hurried manner.
After asking news of the battle the gentleman observed, "But you are
wounded?" "No." "Not wounded! Why, there is blood upon the bosom of
your shirt!" The young man quickly crossed his hands firmly upon his
breast; and his friend, supposing that he wished to conceal a wound
which ought to be looked to, pulled open his shirt, and saw--what made
the young man let fall his hands in despair. From between his shirt
and his breast the friend took out--a bloody scalp! "I could not help
it," said the poor victim of early habits, in an agonized voice. He
turned and ran, too swiftly to be overtaken, betook himself to the
Indians, and never more appeared among the whites.
An Indian once brought up a young lion, and finding him weak and
harmless, did not attempt to control him. Every day the lion gained in
strength and became more unmanageable, until at last, when excited by
rage, he fell upon his master and tore him to pieces. So what seemed
to be an "innocent" sin has grown until it strangled him who was once
its easy master.
Beware of looking at sin, for at each view it is apt to become better
looking.
Habit is practically, for a middle-aged person, fate; for is it not
practically certain that what I have done for twenty years I shall
repeat to-day? What are the chances for a man who has been lazy and
indolent all his life starting in to-morrow morning to be industrious;
or a spendthrift, frugal; a libertine, virtuous; a profane,
foul-mouthed man, clean and chaste?
A Grecian flute-player charged double fees for pupils who had been
taught by inferior masters, on the ground that it was much harder to
undo than to form habits.
Habit tends to make us permanently what we are for the moment. We
cannot possibly hear, see, feel, or experience anything which is not
woven in the web of character. What we are this minute and what we do
this minute, what we think this minute, will be read in the future
character as plainly as words spoken into the phonograph can be
reproduced in the future.
"The air itself," says Babbage, "is one vast library on whose pages are
written forever all that man has ever said, whispered, or done." Every
sin you ever committed becomes your boon companion. It rushes to your
lips every time you speak, and drags its hideous form into your
imagination every time you think. It throws its shadow across your
path whichever way you turn. Like Banquo's ghost, it will not down.
You are fastened to it for life, and it will cling to you in the vast
forever. Do you think yourself free? You are a slave to every sin you
ever committed. They follow your pen and work their own character into
every word you write.
Rectitude is only the confirmed habit of doing what is right. Some men
cannot tell a lie: the habit of truth telling is fixed, it has become
incorporated with their nature. Their characters bear the indelible
stamp of veracity. You and I know men whose slightest word is
unimpeachable; nothing could shake our confidence in them. There are
other men who cannot speak the truth: their habitual insincerity has
made a twist in their characters, and this twist appears in their
speech.
"I never in my life committed more than one act of folly," said
Rulhière one day in the presence of Talleyrand. "But where will it
end?" inquired the latter. It was lifelong. One mistake too many
makes all the difference between safety and destruction.
How many men would like to go to sleep beggars and wake up Rothschilds
or Astors? How many would fain go to bed dunces and wake up Solomons?
You reap what you have sown. Those who have sown dunce-seed,
vice-seed, laziness-seed, always get a crop. They that sow the wind
shall reap the whirlwind.
Habit, like a child, repeats whatever is done before it. Oh, the power
of a repeated act to get itself repeated again and again! But, like
the wind, it is a power which we can use to force our way in its very
teeth as does the ship, and thus multiply our strength, or we can drift
with it without exertion upon the rocks and shoals of destruction.
What a great thing it is to "start right" in life. Every young man can
see that the first steps lead to the last, with all except his own.
No, his little prevarications and dodgings will not make him a liar,
but he can see that they surely will in John Smith's case. He can see
that others are idle and on the road to ruin, but cannot see it in his
own case.
There is a wonderful relation between bad habits. They all belong to
the same family. If you take in one, no matter how small or
insignificant it may seem, you will soon have the whole. A man who has
formed the habit of laziness or idleness will soon be late at his
engagements; a man who does not meet his engagements will dodge,
apologize, prevaricate, and lie. I have rarely known a perfectly
truthful man who was always behind time.
You have seen a ship out in the bay swinging with the tide and the
waves; the sails are all up, and you wonder why it does not move, but
it cannot, for down beneath the water it is anchored. So we often see
a young man apparently well equipped, well educated, and we wonder that
he does not advance toward manhood and character. But, alas! we find
that he is anchored to some secret vice, and he can never advance until
he cuts loose.
"The first crime past compels us into more,
And guilt grows _fate_ that was but _choice_ before."
"Small habits, well pursued betimes,
May reach the dignity of crimes."
Thousands can sympathize with David when he cried, "My sins have taken
such hold upon me that I am not able to look up; my heart faileth me."
Like the damned spot of blood on Lady Macbeth's hand, these foul spots
on the imagination will not out. What a penalty nature exacts for
physical sins. The gods are just, and "of our pleasant vices make
instruments to plague us."
Plato wrote over his door, "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter
here." The greatest value of the study of the classics and mathematics
comes from the habits of accurate and concise thought which it induces.
The habit-forming portion of life is the dangerous period, and we need
the discipline of close application to hold us outside of our studies.
Washington at thirteen wrote one hundred and ten maxims of civility and
good behavior, and was most careful in the formation of all habits.
Franklin, too, devised a plan of self-improvement and character
building. No doubt the noble characters of these two men, almost
superhuman in their excellence, are the natural result of their early
care and earnest striving towards perfection.
Fielding, describing a game of cards between Jonathan Wild, of
pilfering propensities, and a professional gambler, says: "Such was the
power of habit over the minds of these illustrious persons, that Mr.
Wild could not keep his hands out of the count's pockets, though he
knew they were empty; nor could the count abstain from palming a card,
though he was well aware Mr. Wild had no money to pay him."
"Habit," says Montaigne, "is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress.
She, by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of
her authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the
aid of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and
tyrannic countenance against which we have no more the courage nor the
power so much as to lift up our eyes." It led a New York man actually
to cut off his hand with a cleaver under a test of what he would resort
to, to get a glass of whiskey. It has led thousands of nature's
noblemen to drunkards' and libertines' graves.
Gough's life is a startling illustration of the power of habit, and of
the ability of one apparently a hopeless slave to break his fetters and
walk a free man in the sunlight of heaven. He came to America when
nine years old. Possessed of great powers of song, of mimicry, and of
acting, and exceedingly social in his tastes, a thousand temptations
"Widened and strewed with flowers the way
Down to eternal ruin."
"I would give this right hand to redeem those terrible seven years of
dissipation and death," he would often say in after years when, with
his soul still scarred and battered from his conflict with blighting
passion, he tearfully urged young men to free themselves from the
chains of bestial habits.
In the laboratory of Faraday a workman one day knocked into a jar of
acid a silver cup; it disappeared, was eaten up by the acid, and could
not be found. The question came up whether it could ever be found.
The great chemist came in and put certain chemicals into the jar, and
every particle of the silver was precipitated to the bottom. The mass
was then sent to a silversmith, and the cup restored. So a precious
youth who has fallen into the sink of iniquity, lost, dissolved in sin,
can only be restored by the Great Chemist.
What is put into the first of life is put into the whole of life. "Out
of a church of twenty-seven hundred members, I have never had to
exclude a single one who was received while a child," said Spurgeon.
It is the earliest sin that exercises the most influence for evil.
Benedict Arnold was the only general in the Revolution that disgraced
his country. He had great military talent, wonderful energy, and a
courage equal to any emergency. But Arnold _did not start right_.
Even when a boy he was despised for his cruelty and his selfishness.
He delighted in torturing insects and birds that he might watch their
sufferings. He scattered pieces of glass and sharp tacks on the floor
of the shop he was tending, to cut the feet of the barefooted boys.
Even in the army, in spite of his bravery, the soldiers hated him, and
the officers dared not trust him.
Let no man trust the first false step
Of guilt; it hangs upon a precipice,
Whose steep descent in last perdition ends.
YOUNG
Years ago there was a district lying near Westminster Abbey, London,
called the "Devil's Acre,"--a school for vicious habits, where
depravity was universal; where professional beggars were fitted with
all the appliances of imposture; where there was an agency for the hire
of children to be carried about by forlorn widows and deserted wives,
to move the compassion of street-giving benevolence; where young
pickpockets were trained in the art and mystery which was to conduct
them in due course to an expensive voyage for the good of their country
to Botany Bay.
Victor Hugo describes a strange association of men in the seventeenth
century who bought children and distorted and made monstrosities of
them to amuse the nobility with; and in cultured Boston there is an
association of so-called "respectable men," who have opened thousands
of "places of business" for deforming men, women, and children's souls.
But we deform ourselves with agencies so pleasant that we think we are
having a good time, until we become so changed and enslaved that we
scarcely recognize ourselves. Vice, the pleasant guest which we first
invited into our heart's parlor, becomes vulgarly familiar, and
intrenches herself deep in our very being. We ask her to leave, but
she simply laughs at us from the hideous wrinkles she has made in our
faces, and refuses to go. Our secret sins defy us from the hideous
furrows they have cut in our cheeks. Each impure thought has chiseled
its autograph deep into the forehead, too deep for erasure, and the
glassy, bleary eye adds its testimony to our ruined character.
The devil does not apply his match to the hard coal; but he first
lights the shavings of "innocent sins," and the shavings the wood, and
the wood the coal. Sin is gradual. It does not break out on a man
until it has long circulated through his system. Murder, adultery,
theft, are not committed in deed until they have been committed in
thought again and again.
"Don't write there," said a man to a boy who was writing with a diamond
pin on a pane of glass in the window of a hotel. "Why not?" inquired
the boy. "Because you can't rub it out." Yet the glass might have
been broken and all trace of the writing lost, but things written upon
the human soul can never be removed, for the tablet is immortal.
"In all the wide range of accepted British maxims," said Thomas Hughes,
"there is none, take it all in all, more thoroughly abominable than
this one, as to the sowing of wild oats. Look at it on what side you
will, and I defy you to make anything but a devil's maxim of it. What
man, be he young, old, or middle-aged, sows, that, and nothing else,
shall he reap. The only thing to do with wild oats is to put them
carefully into the hottest part of the fire, and get them burnt to
dust, every seed of them. If you sow them, no matter in what ground,
up they will come with long, tough roots and luxuriant stalks and
leaves, as sure as there is a sun in heaven. The devil, too, whose
special crop they are, will see that they thrive, and you, and nobody
else, will have to reap them."
We scatter seeds with careless hand,
And dream we ne'er shall see them more;
But for a thousand years
Their fruit appears,
In weeds that mar the land.
JOHN KEBLE.
Theodora boasted that she could draw Socrates' disciples away from him.
"That may be," said the philosopher, "for you lead them down an easy
descent whereas I am forcing them to mount to virtue--an arduous ascent
and unknown to most men."
"When I am told of a sickly student," said Daniel Wise, "that he is
'studying himself to death,' or of a feeble young mechanic, or clerk,
that his hard work is destroying him, I study his countenance, and
there, too often, read the real, melancholy truth in his dull, averted,
sunken eye, discolored skin, and timid manner. These signs proclaim
that the young man is in some way violating the laws of his physical
nature. He is secretly destroying himself. Yet, say his unconscious
and admiring friends, 'He is falling a victim to his own diligence!'
Most lame and impotent conclusion! He is sapping the very source of
life, and erelong will be a mind in ruins or a heap of dust. Young
man, beware of his example! 'Keep thyself pure;' observe the laws of
your physical nature, and the most unrelaxing industry will never rob
you of a month's health, nor shorten the thread of your life; for
industry and health are companions, and long life is the heritage of
diligence."
"How shall I a habit break?"
As you did that habit make.
As you gathered, you must lose;
As you yielded, now refuse.
Thread by thread the strands we twist
Till they bind us neck and wrist.
Thread by thread the patient hand
Must untwine ere free we stand.
As we builded, stone by stone,
We must toil, unhelped, alone,
Till the wall is overthrown.
But remember, as we try,
Lighter every test goes by;
Wading in, the stream grows deep
Toward the centre's downward sweep;
Backward turn, each step ashore
Shallower is than that before.
Ah, the precious years we waste
Leveling what we raised in haste;
Doing what must be undone,
Ere content or love be won!
First across the gulf we cast
Kite-borne threads till lines are passed,
And habit builds the bridge at last.
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.