DEVELOPING CHARACTERS 181 



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 surround- 

 ings will permit. 



If new habits are hard to start, new traits are 

 harder. It is hard to teach a plant to twine 

 when it has never twined before, or to per- 

 suade it to be pink when it has always been 

 yellow; just as it is hard to get a boy interested 

 in the study of law when his likes, all his life, 

 have been along the lines of engineering or 

 mechanics. 



In the establishment of a new trait, in fact, the 

 whole motion of life must be interrupted, its 

 momentum arrested, the resulting Inertia over- 

 come, and new momentum in a new direction 

 gained. 



But, if every difficulty has its recompense, we 

 are well repaid for the labor of acquiring or in- 

 stilling a new trait by the fact that, once ac- 

 quired, it has a tendency of its own to increase 

 and expand and grow. 



The boy who finally gets interested in law, 

 who gets past the point where it becomes an irk- 

 some drudgery, begins, at length, to develop a 

 steadfast love for his work so that what was to 

 him, once, a bugbear at last becomes an absorb- 

 ing ideal. 



