--_St. Augustine._ 815 Habit with him was all the test of truth, "It must be right: I've done it from my youth." --_Crabbe._ 816 INNOCENCE AND GUILT. A painter, desiring to paint a picture of Innocence, found a beautiful boy playing at the side of a stream, who became his model. He painted him kneeling, with his hands clasped in prayer. The picture was prized as a very beautiful one. Years passed away, and the artist became an old man. He had often thought of painting a counterpart, the picture of guilt, as a companion to the other; and at last he executed it. He went to a neighboring prison, and there selected the most degraded and repulsive man he could find. His body and eye were wasted; vice was visible in his very face. But what was the artist's surprise when, on questioning the man as to his history, he found that it was he who, as a lovely boy, had kneeled for him as the model of Innocence! Evil habits had gradually changed him, not only in heart and mind, but in face and form. 817 All habits gather by unseen degrees. As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. --_Dryden: Ovid._ 818 Old habits are hard to break; new habits are hard to make. 819 Taste may change; our inclinations never change. 820 Habits are soon assumed--acquired--but when we strive to strip them off,--if of long standing--'tis being flayed alive! --_Cowper._ 821 To stop the hand, is the way to stop the mouth. (If a man will not work, neither shall he eat.) --_Chinese._ 822 ELOQUENCE OF THE HANDS. The hands are, by the very instincts of humanity, raised in prayer; clasped in affection; wrung in despair; pressed on the forehead when the soul is "perplexed in the extreme;" drawn inward, to invite; thrust forth objectively, to repel; the fingers point to indicate, and are snapped in disdain; the palm is laid upon the heart, in invocation of subdued feeling, and on the brow of the compassioned in benediction. The expressive capacity of the hands was never more strikingly displayed than in the orisons (prayer) of the deaf and dumb. Their teacher stood with closed eyes, and addressing the Deity by those signs made with the fingers which constitute a language for the speechless. Around him were grouped more than a hundred mutes, following with reverent glances every motion. It was a visible, but not an audible, worship. 823 THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HAND.