THE object of this little book is to create associations much more than to encourage mere habits of routine, however good. Routine, in order to be a helping-and in order not to be a hindering―process, must be made subservient to some high and absorbing purpose; some purpose the overflowing vitality of which shall be made all the more serviceable by a slight admixture of the dead weight of routine. The most difficult people in the world to get any good out of are those whose lives are the most perfectly regular and systematic. The most excellent maxims are liable to lose the greater part of their emphasis if merely set forth in order and left, unaided by any special form of enforcement. We learn from statements made by some of "them of old time," and verified constantly since, that unity involves strength, and that converse is unfailingly useful alike to the talkers and the things talked of. These triplets of thoughts may be regarded each of them as the concentrated essence of a

conversation, especially as the object has been so to arrange the extracts that they shall be kindred rather than repetitious in their expression. Three thoughts will surely suggest or help on a fourth, and thus an association of ideas will speedily be formed, and no one can tell how far the influence of such associations may extend. Some of these thoughts may become so encrusted with meditations of your own, that they shall contribute to the embellishment of your mind, and consequently of your life, a similar beauty-delicate alike in detail and in general effect-to that which moss or fern-covered fragments of rock give to those choice bits of natural scenery which we have all met with, and most of us, I hope, observed with loving care and anxious appreciation.

W. B. T.