A habit is so easily formed, so strong to compel. There are few parents who would not labour diligently if for every month’s labour they were able to endow one of their children with £1000. But, in a month, a parent may form a habit in his child of such infinite value that your thousand pounds is a mere bagatelle by comparison. We have often urged that the great discovery which modern science has brought to the aid of the educator is, that every habit of the life sets up, as it were, a material record in the brain tissues. We all know that we think as we are used to think and act as we are used to act. Ever since man began to notice the ways of his own mind this law of habit has been matter of common knowledge, and has been more or less acted upon by parents and other trainers of children. The well brought-up child has always been a child carefully trained in good habits. But it is only within our own day that it has been possible to lay down definite laws for the formation of habits. Until now, the mother who wished to train her children in such and such a good habit has found herself hindered by a certain sense of casualty. “I am sure I am always telling her”--to keep her drawers neat, or to hold up her head and speak nicely, or to be quick and careful about an errand,--says the poor mother, with tears in her eyes; and indeed this, of “always telling” him or her is a weary process for the mother; dull, because hopeless. She goes on “telling” to deliver her own soul, for she has long since ceased to expect any result; and we know how dreary is work without hope. But, perhaps even his mother does not know how unutterably dreary is this “always telling,” which produces nothing, to the child. At first he is fretful and impatient under the patter of idle words; then he puts up with the inevitable, but comes at last hardly to be aware that the thing is being said. As for any impression on his character, any habit really formed, all this labour is without result; the child does the thing when he cannot help it and evades as often as he can. And the poor disappointed mother says, “I’m sure I’ve tried as much as any mother to train my children in good habits, but I have failed.” She is not altogether dispirited, however. The children have not the habits she wished to train them in, but they grow up warm-hearted, good-natured, bright young people, by no means children to be ashamed of. All the same, the mother’s sense of failure is a monition to be trusted. Our failures in life are, perhaps, due, for the most part, to the defects of our qualities, and, therefore, it is not enough to send children into the world with just the inheritance of character they get from their parents.