HABIT 



2653 



HACKETT 



It is in some such way that habits are 

 formed, though the making cannot be watched 

 so clearly. An action is performed once and 

 somewhere in the complex nervous system it 

 leaves its tiny record. Next time the same 

 action is performed the record becomes a little 

 clearer and more definite, until finally the 

 action, so to speak, performs itself whenever 

 the proper stimulus is given. To be sure, no 

 one has even seen these tracks which actions 

 record on the nervous system, but they prove 

 their existence positively. 



Importance of Habits. Is habit, on the 

 whole, a good or a bad thing? Suppose a man 

 had to put his whole attention on every detail 

 of everything undertaken; how much would he 

 accomplish? The writer would be so occupied 

 in seeing that his letters were correctly made 

 that his brain could not concentrate upon orig- 

 inal thoughts; the piano-player so busy glanc- 

 ing from music to keyboard and back again 

 that the music produced would be a series of 

 jerky sounds; the walker so interested in keep- 

 ing his feet on the pathway that he would 

 have no eyes for the beauties around him. As 

 it is, the brain turns many of these simple 

 functions over to the lower nervous centers 

 and is thus free to occupy itself with worthier 

 things. Conscious attention, long continued, is 

 a very fatiguing thing, and the more acts that 

 can be performed habitually or unconsciously, 

 the smaller the mental demand. 



For instance, if a man who has daily work 

 to do has to rouse himself and force himself 

 to rise every morning; if he has to drive him- 

 self to his work each day, consciously bringing 

 his attention to bear on it, he is using up a 

 great store of energy which might be expended 

 in making his work more efficient. Indeed, 

 nothing is a greater help to the worker in any 

 field than the formation of habits which make 

 the detail work as nearly automatic as possible. 



As the right sort of habits may be most help- 

 ful, the wrong sort can certainly hinder. Most 

 conspicuous of all sometimes almost the only 

 sort of habits to which the -name is applied 

 are such habits as those which result from the 

 craving for drugs or for alcohol; habits which 

 originate in a bodily demand, and become in 

 time so strong that the will cannot control 

 them. But there are other habits which are 

 little less harmful nervous habits, which ex- 

 pend energy unnecessarily; habits of covetous- 

 ness, or of bodily or mental sloth. Childhood 

 and youth are the time of habit-f orming the 

 old man is little more than a bundle of habits; 



and no one phase in the training of children is 

 more important than that they shall be assisted 

 in the forming of right habits. Ovid, a poet 

 of ancient Rome, voiced a truth which never 

 will change: 



111 habits gather by unseen degrees 



As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. 



HACKBERRY. See NETTLE TREE. 



HACKENSACK, N. .!., a residential town 

 and the county seat of Bergen County, is situ- 

 ated in the northeastern part of the state, 

 fourteen miles north of Jersey City, and on 

 the Hackensack River. The population, which 

 in 1910 was 14,050, was 16,945, by Federal 

 estimate, in 1916. The area of the city is four 

 square miles. Railroad accommodations are 

 provided by the New York. Susquehanna & 

 Western and the New York, Ontario & Western 

 lines, and by two divisions of the Erie. The 

 West Shore Railroad is reached at Bogola, near 

 the city. Electric lines connect Hackensack 

 with Paterson, Hoboken, Rutherford, Passaic 

 and Newark, and there is electric and ferry 

 communication with New York City. 



The city is attractively situated on a slope 

 of land rising about Hackensack meadows 

 along the river. It contains the Johnson Public 

 Library, Hackensack Hospital, an Old Ladies' 

 Home, a Federal building erected in 1916 at a 

 cost of $100,000, and a county courthouse and 

 jail. Of special interest are two historic build- 

 ings of the eighteenth century, a mansion- 

 house and a quaint old Dutch church. 



The city has manufactures of wall paper and 

 silk and an important bookbindery. Textile 

 dyeing, bleaching, brick manufacturing and 

 the making of theatrical costumes and paper 

 boxes are other important industries. 



Hackensack, which was named for the Hack- 

 ensack Indians, was settled by the Dutch 

 about 1640. It was incorporated in 1868. 



HACKETT, hak'et, JAMES KETELTAS (1869- 

 ), an American actor and manager, who 

 became a leading man in New York at the age 

 of twenty-four, the youngest leading man in 

 the stage history of that city. He was born 

 on Wolfe Island, Ontario, the son of an Amer- 

 ican actor, and, after graduation from the 

 College of the City of New York in 1891, 

 studied at the New York Law School. In 

 1897 he married the actress, Mary Mannering, 

 and later appeared with her in various suc- 

 cessful plays, such as The Walls of Jericho in 

 1906. Under the management of Daniel Froh- 

 man, his greatest successes were in The Pris- 

 oner of Zenda in 1896, its sequel, Rupert of 



