e pay no heed to them.

Lord Bacon says: "Many examples may be put of the force of custom,
both upon mind and body. Therefore, since custom is the principle
magistrate of man's life, let men by all means endeavor to obtain good
customs. Certainly custom is most perfect when it beginneth in young
years; this we call education, which is, in effect, but an early
custom."

So we see that our true characters are but the expression of our
habits and of our manners. And we see that only those habits that are
formed in the early years of life seem to fit us perfectly and
naturally throughout all the years.

It is an old saying and a homely one, but none the less true, that "it
is hard to teach an old dog new tricks." So it is hard to acquire in
later life the manners and graces that escape us in youth.

Fortunate is the young girl who finds her lot is cast among the good
influences of a cultured home. She has at hand the material from which
to select all that she may need to build the fine character the world
shall observe and admire. Such felicitous surroundings should teach
her, first of all, to be very charitable and lenient toward others
whose early years are lived among less advantageous surroundings. For
if her culture does not in some ways influence and soften and modify
her heart as well as her mind, its true purpose has been lost.

Those whose earlier years are spent amid surroundings not so favorable
for the forming of golden habits, must strive all the harder for the
prize of gentility which they would obtain. And in this very struggle
against adverse circumstances will be engendered a strength and a
spirit of self-reliance that will be likely to prove a worthy
equivalent for the loss of a more kindly and propitious environment.

It is experience that develops character, and character is the one
thing that distinguishes a life and makes it a definite and individual
thing of supreme beauty.

The character that is the most laboriously built is the most enduring.
Golden habits that have been hammered out of our life experiences are
to be implicitly relied upon. They have been tested at every point.
They have been shaped out of the very necessity of one's surroundings.
They are worth every effort that they have cost. The world will never
know how much of its integrity, how much of its stability, how much of
its beauty it owes to that which we are all so prone to call

DRUDGERY

Dull drud