el, 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
Rulhiere 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