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