150 THOUSAND YEARS BEFORE NOAH. vented. How, then, could seven or eight hundred years of life be supportable? I have asked this question formerly, and been at a loss to resolve it, but I think I can answer it now. I will suppose myself born a thousand years before Noah was born or thought of. I rise with the sun; I worship; I prepare my breakfast; I swallow a bucket of goat's milk and a dozen good sizable cakes. I fasten a new string to my bow, and my youngest boy, a lad of about thirty years of age, having played with my arrows till he has stripped off all the feathers, I find myself obliged to repair them. The morning is thus spent in preparing for the chase, and it is become necessary that I should dine. I dig up my roots, I wash them; I boil them; I find them not done enough, I boil them again; my wife is angry; we dispute, we settle the point; but in the mean time the fire goes out, and must be kindled again. All this is very amusing. I hunt, I bring home the prey; with the skin of it I mend an old coat or I make a new one. By this time the day is far spent ; I feel myself fatigued, and retire to rest. Thus, what with tilling the ground, and eating the fruit of it, hunting, walking, and running, and mending old clothes, and sleeping and rising again, I can suppose an inhabitant of the primeval world so much occupied as to sigh over the shortness of life, and to find at the end of many centuries that they had all slipped through his fingers, and were passed away like a shadow. What wonder, then, that I, who live in a day of so much greater refinement, when there is so much more to be wanted, and wished, and to be enjoyed, should feel myself now and then pinched in point of opportunity, and at some loss for leisure to fill up four sides of a sheet like this? Thus, however, it is, and if the ancient gentlemen to whom I have referred, and their complaints of the disproportion of time to the occasions they had for it, will not serve me as an excuse, I must even plead guilty, and confess that I am often in haste when I have no good reason for being so." CHAPTER IX. FORMATION OF HABITS. John Foster's Indian Fashions. Dr Chalmers's Handwriting. THE different tribes of Indians in this country have various notions as to what constitutes human beauty. But whatever their ideas may be, they are all careful to begin to train the child according to this standard early. If the pappoose belong to the Flatheads, he has a board securely bound to his head, that his skull may be flattened by the DR CHALMERS'S HANDWRITING. 153 continual pressure. If he is a child of one of the Nez Perces, his nose is early cut and trimmed into the fashionable shape. All, while infants, are fastened to a board, that they may be erect. I have seen an Indian over a hundred years of age, who was still straight as an arrow in consequence of being thus trained. Thus we can impress habits upon the body, the mind, and the whole character. These habits are of great value if good, but if wrong, they are sore misfortunes. Dr Chalmers wrote a very illegible hand. When writing to his mother, he says, "Let me know if you can read my present letter; for if you can, it will give me satisfaction to know that I can make myself legible. I have made a particular effort, and I hope I have succeeded in it." Three years after, his old habit is strong as ever; for in a letter from his mother to one of her other children, she writes, “I had a letter last night from Thomas. It is a vast labour the reading his letters. I sometimes take a week to make them out." It is hardly necessary to bring forward such an example to prove that habits are formed 154 JOHN FOSTER'S REGRET. in early life, and grow upon us, and cling to us firmer and firmer, the longer we live. Whether we desire them or not, we shall, have them. Dr Paley says truly: "We act from habit nine times, where we do once from deliberation." Let the habits of the aged be what they may, we do not expect or attempt any change. But it is very important for the young to know what habits to form, and how this may be done. Any action repeated at stated periods becomes a habit. Thus the habit of the intemperate begins by his having stated hours or places where he drinks. And if any one desires to know whether his future life will be happy or wretched, let him now decide what habits to abandon, what ones to strengthen. "How much I regret," says John Foster, "to see so generally abandoned to the weeds of vanity that fertile and vigorous space of life, in which might be planted the oaks and the fruit-trees of enlightened principle and virtuous habit, which, growing up, would yield to old age an enjoyment, a glory, and a shade." Life-long habits you are now forming, and |