LUTHER BURBANK 
The hard part, always, is to make the start. 
We who are late sleepers, for example, know 
the weeks of discouraging attempts it takes to 
fix the habit of arising at seven instead of eight, 
or at six instead of seven. Yet, once we have 
thoroughly accustomed ourselves to the new hour 
of awakening, it is just as difficult to get back to 
the old hour as it was to get away from it. 
It is as if the tendencies within us, having 
accommodated themselves to each other and to 
our surroundings, cling together tenaciously to 
maintain the equilibrium between themselves; 
when we change our surroundings they adjust 
themselves to the change with difficulty; but once 
adjusted, hold together as firmly again as they 
held before. 
So in plant life; when we transplant a flower or 
a tree, it shows signs, in accommodating itself to 
its new surroundings, of evident distress; it looks 
sickly, its leaves droop, it gives many outward 
proofs of the inward struggle which it is under- 
going. 
As soon, however, as its suddenly scattered 
tendencies have collected themselves, the plant 
begins an era of immediate improvement, and 
does as well or better than it did before trans- 
planting—as well, in fact, as its new surroundings 
will permit. 
[144] 
