But we must remember that in guiding the child to the formation of these habits, example and practice are far more important than precepts and rules. Example is more important because the child is very imitative; one rude act on the part of some older member of the household will counteract the benefit of many verbal lessons in politeness. Practice is important because it is through constant repetition of an act that it at last becomes automatic, and is performed without thought or attention. In fact, this is the only way in which a habit can be formed. Having acquired habits about the common relations of life that do not call for new adjustment every time they are met, the mind is left free to apply itself to problems that really need special consideration. Imagine how wasteful it would be if we had to attend to every movement in dressing ourselves! You can easily see that there are a great many acts that bring us in relation to others and that should be as mechanical and automatic as dressing and undressing. It is when we pass from the routine acts which are repeated every day that we come to the field in which the will holds sway. There is nothing more helpful in the training of the will than the frequent performance of tasks requiring application, self control, and the making of decisions. The routine of fixed duties in a large and complex household furnished to our grandparents, during their youth, just the opportunity for the formation of habits in attending to what needed to be done, without regard to the momentary impulse or mood. Many of our modern homes are so devoid of such opportunities that there is great danger that our children will have altogether too much practice in following their whims and caprices--or in doing nothing. It is just because the modern home is so devoid of the opportunities for carrying on these character-building activities that provision must be made in that other great educational institution, the school. All the newer activities of the school, the shop work and the school garden, the domestic science and the sewing, the recreation centres, the art and the music--all these so-called "fads and frills" against which the taxpayer raises his voice in protest-- these prove to be even more important in the making of men and women out of children than the respectable and acceptable subjects of the old-fashioned school; for these activities are but organized and planned substitutes for the incidental doings of the childhood of other days. They are the formal substitutes for the activities by means of which a past generation of men and women acquired that will-training and that insight into relations which distinguished their characters. [Illustration: Habits of careful work furnish a good foundation for the will.]