Elmer: Couldn’t he overcome any other bad habit in just the same way?
Mother: Yes; whether he wants food that is not good, or too much of that which is good; whether he wishes to leave off using tobacco, or other bad habits of any kind, when he gets his will on the right side, the battle is more than half over.
Amy: Then a person can not have too much will.
Mother: Not if he wills to do right; but if he places his will on the wrong side, it is a sad thing. Sometimes he wills to have his own way, no matter how it may affect himself or others, and that is bad for him and for his friends.
Here is a room where the master measures people. We can imagine that they stand about like statues, and some he places high in his esteem, and the others lower down. I think about the worst thing he could do would be to place himself higher than any one else. Boys and girls are sometimes in danger of doing this, even thinking that they know more than their father and mother. It is well to have a fair-sized room of this kind, but bad to have one which is large. We shall not have time to visit more of the rooms to be found in the mind, though there are many others that we might visit.
Helen: I wish we might hear about all of them.
Mother: You may, as you grow older. You must be very careful to have the master of your own house live in the best and highest rooms. Strange as it may seem, yet it is true that the rooms he stays in most will grow larger the more they are used. Some live in the lower, poorer rooms all their lives. The people we love best spend most of their time in the highest rooms.
Percy: Is there any way by which we can tell where the master spends most of his time?
Mother: Yes; clean, kind thoughts make marks on our faces, and wicked, cruel thoughts leave their print also. Our thoughts pull up or draw down the corners of the mouth, and they make little wrinkles under the eyes and in the forehead. Sometimes they make little holes in the cheeks, which we call dimples. If our thoughts are kind, pleasant, happy thoughts, they draw the corners of the mouth upward; the wrinkles are smoothed out of the forehead, and there are some merry ones which gather round the eyes and make the face look so pleasant that we want to get near its owner and become better acquainted.
Amy: I didn’t know that our thoughts looked out in our faces.