Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-12-26
WHAT HABITS ARE
YOU COLLECTING?
Minds Likened to Phonograph
Discs on Which Needle
Leaves Tracks

How use does breed a habit in a
| mani" Shakespeare said it quite a
while ago, and, like most of his
1uotab1e remarks, it is true to-day
| universal.
When You stop to think that our
minds are actually like the phono-
graph discs on which their record
ing needle leaves its track. you
| have also to recognize the impor-
tance of being careful to pick out
the tunes. OF course, IL you have
Annie Laurie" recorded on your
| wax dies and you decide that you
prefer THE Marseillaise" probably
YOU can scrape off the first tune
| track, put on some more prepared
material and start over.
As far as that is concerned. you
can erase single impression pretty
thoroughly from your conscious
mind, but buried in the subcon-
scious remains a trace of the track
you permitted to be recorded there.
Unless we actually pick ourselves
up out of rut, most of us go jog
ging along through life in groove.
The minute you recognize the truth
of that, you see how important ii is
to choose carefully your groove or
set of grooves.
If you are going to collect habits,
they had better be good ones. For,
after you get these friendly little
habits they generally turn out to be
regular "old men of the sea"-hard
to shake are bad habits, because
they get you gretty soon after you
get them.
/ wonder how many hopeless, sod
den drunkards, whose groove is n
ditch, started by taking a drink ev-
cry night at dinner and then drifted
along to two or three and pretty soon
added a drink or so at lunch. That
habit of taking one glass of wine
with dinner seemed simple and
harmless until it grew and made of
the habitual drinker an habitual
drunkard.
One OF the dangerous habits into
which the feminine person drifts
very easily nowadays is that of us
ing a great deal of makeup" Now
there is nothing intrinsically immor-
al about putting flesh -colored pow
der on your nose. 1t went there
first, l suppose, with praiseworthy
vision of toning down an ugly and
unbecoming state of shininess. And
il 1iesh-colored powder is not i'm
moral, neither is rose color nor Grim
son.
But the human mind has a habit
of associating rouge and immortality
Since Bible times "the painted wom-
an" was descriptive term applied
to paint the woman OF no morals.
Well, then, the woman who paints
meets a mental habit-that of cata-
loguing her in an unpleasant divi-
sion. That, in itself, is bad enough
and she might escape by making up
so delicateiy and daintily as to es-
cape detection.
But after you have the habit OF
putting on a little rosy glow. you
get the habit of trying to beautify
yourself, you lose your sense of pro-
portion, you have the habit of find
ing beauty in high coloring. And
the woman who started out in Janu-
airy to indicate the bloom of youth
softly on her fading cheeks is likely
to be discovered about October the
next with glowing red lips, glazing
white nose and cleaning black eye
lashes, all cheapening and lowering
the tone OF a face she has drifted
into the habit of coloring and trying
to beautify.
On with our endless chain! The
habit of using makeup gets woman
into the habit of counting on her
beauty to win her friends, to give
her the reputation for charm. 1t
gets her out of the habit of cult
waiting her mentality and her hne
character. See what Il dangerous
chain of circumstances we have set
in motion by purchasing tint box OF
"Maiden's Blush and getting in the
habit of applying it.
It's a serious business. even If we