gle to escape from the training that prepares them for life, how they labor to convince themselves that what they long to do is worthier and nobler than what they ought to do-and must do if they are to succeed in what they long to do. I once knew a student, against all advice, to leave college in the middle of the Freshman year, because, since he was going into the ministry, he was eager to devote his whole time to the Bible. Later he saw his mistake, and came back. I knew another and a wiser student who, having gone into the ministry without a college education, left it for years of sacrifice in money and of the hardest kind of work, to win that knowledge of books and men without which no modern minister is equipped for efficient service. The efficient people are those who know their business and do it promptly and patiently, who when leisure comes have earned it, and know they have earned it; who when one

thing is done can turn their attention squarely and completely to the next thing, and do that. The efficient student is he who has as nearly as possible a fixed time for every part of his work; who, if he has a recitation at ten and another at twelve, knows in advance what he is to study at eleven. He has most time for work and most time for unalloyed play, since he makes use of that invaluable friend to labor, -routine. "Habit," says the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, "is a labor-saving invention which enables a man to get along with less fuel, that is all; for fuel is force, you know, just as much in the page I am writing for you as in the locomotive or the legs which carry it to you." "Habit," says Professor James,"simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue." "Man," he continues, "is born with a tendency to do more things than he has ready-made arrangements for in his nerve-centres.

Most of the performances of other animals are automatic. But in him the number of them is so enormous that most of them must be the fruit of painful study. If practice did not make perfect, nor habit economize the expense of nervous and muscular energy, he would be in a sorry plight. As Dr. Maudsley says: 'If an act became no easier after being done several times, if the careful direction of consciousness were necessary to its accomplishment on each occasion, it is evident that the whole activity of a lifetime might be confined to one or two deeds-that no progress could take place in development. A man might be occupied all day in dressing and undressing himself; the attitude of his body would absorb all his attention and energy; the washing of his hands or the fastening of a button would be as difficult to him on each occasion as to the child on its first trial; and he would, furthermore, be completely exhausted by

his exertions."""The great thing, then, in all education," says Professor James, "is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early 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 should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. . . . Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be such

daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right."

All this shows the true meaning of thoroughness. I have heard it said that thoroughness in education is precisely what we do not want, since thorough work becomes mechanical work, and robs the student of that creative joy which should accompany every exercise of the mind. Yet it is the "effortless custody of automatism" in the lower things that frees the mind for creative joy in the higher. The pianist who cannot through long practice commit to routine all the ordinary movements of the fingers on the keys can never play the music of Schumann or of Beethoven. Sometimes I think that our happiness depends chiefly on our cheerful acceptance of routine, on our refusal to assume, as many do, that daily work and daily duty are a kind of slavery. If we can learn to think of routine as