pital of Varna. It went to sleep,
apparently gorged, on a heap of the cast-off garments of its victims,
to awaken thirty years later to victorious and venomous life.

Professor Bonelli, of Turin, punctured an animal with the tooth of a
rattlesnake. The head of this serpent had lain in a dry state for
sixteen years exposed to the air and dust, and, moreover, had
previously been preserved more than thirty years in spirits of wine.
To his great astonishment an hour afterward the animal died. So
habits, good or bad, that have been lost sight of for years will spring
into a new life to aid or injure us at some critical moment, as kernels
of wheat which had been clasped in a mummy's hand four thousand years
sprang into life when planted. They only awaited moisture, heat,
sunlight, and air to develop them.

In Jefferson's play, Rip Van Winkle, after he had "sworn off," at every
invitation to drink said, "Well, this time don't count." True, as
Professor James says, he may not have counted it, as thousands of
others have not counted it, and a kind heaven may not count it, but it
is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibres
the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used
against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is in
strict scientific literalness wiped out. There is a tendency in the
nervous system to repeat the same mode of action at regularly recurring
intervals. Dr. Combe says that all nervous diseases have a marked
tendency to observe regular periods. "If we repeat any kind of mental
effort at the same hour daily, we at length find ourselves entering
upon it without premeditation when the time approaches."

"The great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our
ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our
acquisition, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this
we must make automatic and habitual, as soon as possible, as many
useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that
are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we would guard against the
plague."

The nervous system is a living phonograph, infinitely more marvelous
than that of Edison. No sound, however feeble, however slight, can
escape being recorded in its wonderful mechanism. Although the
molecules of this living machine may all be entirely changed many times
during a lifetime, yet these impressions are never erased o