DEVELOPING CHARACTERS 179 



tus, crab apples, or wild potatoes waiting only 

 our attention to make them useful we can hard- 

 ly afford to waste time in doing what nature 

 already, laboriously, has done. 



The hard part, always, is to make the start. 



Those 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 out- 

 ward proofs of the inward struggle which it is 

 undergoing. 



As soon, however, as its suddenly scattered 

 tendencies have collected themselves, the plant 



