DYNASTIC NAMES
Most royal families have a given name they employ as a sort of distinctive dynastic hallmark. George and Frederick are distinctively Hanoverian, as Edward is distinctively English. The late king selected Edward rather than Albert from motives at once filial and politic. He desired that his father should stand alone in his glory as Albert in English history, and Edward was associated with old and stately traditions of the Plantagenets and Tudors. Similarly the French Bourbons usually have a Louis or a Charles among their string of names, and the Bonapartes never forget Napoleon at the baptismal font. The most striking instance of reverence for a dynastic name is found in the princely family of Reuss, in Germany. There are two principalities of Reuss, respectively representing the elder and the younger lines. Every reigning prince must bear the name of Henry. Henry XXIV reigns over one principality, and Henry XIV over the other. All the heads of the houses for nine hundred years have been Henrys, and in a grand family council early in the eighteenth century it was decreed that the figures should not exceed one hundred, after which a new series should begin with Henry I. As both branches clung to Henry a working arrangement was patched up by which the younger line begins a new group-numbering with each century. The first Henry born in the twentieth century who shall mount the tiny throne must revert to Henry I, and similarly his descendant senior among the Henrys of the twenty-first century is foreordained to be I, too.—Boston Transcript.
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E
Early Conditions in America—See [Poverty, Early, of United States].
EARLY HABITS TELL
The tree will not only lie as it falls, but it will also fall as it leans; that is, we shall go after what we are inclined to—is not that so?—which makes it all in all to us what the bent of our mind is.
Twenty years ago there were two boys in my Sabbath-school class, bright, lively fellows, who interested me very much; only one of them made me sometimes feel anxious. I often found him out evenings in company with young rowdies. When I asked him how it happened, he used to say he was only out on an errand; the boys spoke to him, and he could not help speaking, he was sure. Perhaps that was so, still it made me uneasy. I once said to his mother: “Is not Willie out of nights too much?” “Willie out nights! Oh, no; Willie does not go out nights.”
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