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 Our evil deeds as well as our good ones will be imitated, often to our own undoing as in the following incident:

The Green Bag tells of an experience which Nathaniel Whitmore, a prominent Maine lawyer, had with a student who was graduated from his office. When Mr. Whitmore was past sixty this young man started practise in a neighboring town; and the older lawyer gave him charge, as agent, of certain property situated in the town where his former clerk was practising. Everything was drawn up in legal form, and the young man fulfilled his duties most satisfactorily. The rents came regularly, together with full accounts of repairs, which were much less than formerly; tenants were satisfied; the property never paid so well before, and Mr. Whitmore was well pleased. Then came a brief letter stating that the property had been sold for taxes. Dumfounded, Mr. Whitmore hastened to his agent to demand what this meant. "How does this happen that I am sold out for taxes?" he asked. "There was nothing in the agreement about taxes," explained the young man, handing to his former client the signed agreement. "Had taxes been mentioned, I should have paid them." "Who bought the houses?" the elder man asked, with a shade of amusement in his tone, as a light began to dawn on his mind. "I did," replied the young man, modestly. "The devil you did! Where did you learn that trick?" asked Mr. Whitmore, now fully comprehending the situation. "In your office," came the answer, in the same modest voice. "I look out for a poor client, but a rich lawyer can look out for himself." The two men shook hands and changed the subject.

(1524)

A beautiful statue once stood in the market-place of an Italian city. It was the statue of a Greek slave-girl. It represented the slave as tidy and well drest. A ragged, uncombed little street child, coming across the statue in her play, stopt and gazed at it in admiration. She was captivated by it. She gazed long and lovingly. Moved by a sudden impulse, she went home and washed her face and combed her hair. Another day she stopt again before the statue and admired it, and she got a new idea. Next day her tattered clothes were washed and mended. Each time she looked at the statue she found something in its beauties until she was a transformed child.

The history of the Christian religion has been a continuous record of men transformed by contemplation of the great Example. (Text.)

(1525)

See ;.

IMITATION DISAPPROVED

It is no use to try to get another man's style, or to imitate the wit or the mannerisms of another writer. The late Mr. Carlyle, for example, did, in my judgment, a considerable mischief in his day because he led everybody to write after the style of his "French Revolution," and it became pretty tedious. They got over it after a time, how-*ever. But it was not a good thing. Let every man write in his own style, taking care only not to be led into any affectation, but to be perfectly clear, perfectly simple.—

(1526)

IMITATION OF GOD

For the Father of all sends sun and rain On the good and ill and shows that we, If we would his perfect children be, Must love not only the good and kind, Must teach not only the true and wise, But patience must open the eyes of the blind And love must conquer her enemies.

(Text.)—, "A Threefold Cord."

(1527)

IMITATION OF NATURE

How far the manual and technical arts of human life owe their suggestion and origin to imitation is a point which, so far as I know, has not been fully considered. That the first canoe was made in imitation of a rotten tree which had served as a ferry-*boat; that the first pillar was constructed in the likeness of an erect tree; that the Gothic arch was made to represent the over-*reaching boughs in some forest glade; that the triglyph in the Doric frieze represents the ends of the cross-beams which rested on the architrave—all this seems very probable, and suggests that further investigation might show that to a great degree imitation of the objects of nature, or of earlier structures, underlies all the various arts and products of human labor.—Lord Justice , Contemporary Review.

(1528)

See.