The peace and restfulness of an orderly and systematic household are in part dependent upon the fact that it is only in such a household that we are enabled to turn over to habit the accomplishment of untold recurrent acts.
The experienced accountant can add figures continuously for eight hours a day, and at the end of the day may feel no great exhaustion. The man who has not reduced to habit the necessary steps in addition cannot add continuously for two hours without a degree of exhaustion so great that it paralyzes effort. The same is true with typewriting, telegraphing, and with all forms of manipulations which may be reduced to habit.
The habit of reading in a foreign language is rarely so well established as the habit of interpreting the printed symbols of the mother tongue. Even when I seem to be reading German as easily as English, a few hours spent in reading German is to me much more exhausting than the same amount of time spent
with an English book. Attending lectures delivered in German is to me more exhausting than the same lectures would be if delivered in English.
Work that requires much constructive thinking cannot be continued for many hours a day. This is due to the fact that such thinking does not admit of complete reduction to specific habits. The executive who accomplishes much is the man who has formed many useful habits and who is able to fall back on them for a large part of his work. His decisions are reached in a habitual manner. Investigations take a regular, automatic course. All the details of the office are reduced to mechanical system. No useless energy is spent in giving attention to details that can be better done by habit, and the mind is thus freed from exhaustion and left fresh for attacking the problems arising for solution.
The performance of every new act and the thinking of every new idea is of necessity exhausting, and they become easy to the extent to which they utilize old habits. Although
constructive thinking is most stimulating and exciting, no man can continue it for more than a few hours or a few minutes unless it depends mainly upon old habits.
Some of the most constructive thinkers of the world have been men who could work at their original work for but a few minutes at a time. One brilliant contemporary writer accomplishes most when he works not more than fifteen minutes at a time. Charles Darwin is famous for the originality of his thinking, and hence we are not surprised when we find that he was able to work but three hours out of the twenty-four.
PERSONAL HABITS
Personal habits are the most apparent and those by which we most often judge an individual. Manner of dress becomes so much a matter of habit that the wearing apparel is sometimes spoken of as the habit, and, as Shakespeare says, it oft betrays the man. Cleanliness and neatness of appearance, the tone and accent of voice, the manner of walk-
ing and of carrying the head, and the use of language are personal habits which are acquired early in life, but which mean much in the chances of success. The manner of eating, of sleeping, and of caring for all the needs of body and mind are for most persons mainly a matter of habit, yet they, to a large extent, determine the condition of health and the length of days.
We become fond of doing things in the manner to which we have become habituated. This tendency manifests itself to an abnormal degree in the drinking and the smoking habit. In a lesser degree we see the same thing in the attachment of the babe for his pacifier and the child for his chewing gum. Habit creates a craving for the good as well as for the bad. The ways to which we have become habituated seem pleasing to us whether they be good or bad. There is truth in the proverb, ``Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.'' It might be added that the child will not want to depart from the way to which he has been trained, for
the habits thus acquired beget a fondness for the acts themselves.