“It seems to me that, were I in your place,” gravely remarked one of the company, heretofore silent, “I would not break my pledge without fully settling two points—­if it is possible for you, or any other man, under like circumstances, to settle them.”

“What are they?” asked Marshall, with interest.

“They are the two most prominent points in your case;—­two that have already been introduced here to-night.  One involves the question, whether you are really free from the influence of your former habits?”

“I have not a single doubt in regard to that point,” was the positive reply.

“I do not see, Mr. Marshall, how it is possible for you to settle it beyond a doubt,” urged the friend.  “To me, it is not philosophically true that the power of habit is ever entirely destroyed.  All subsequent states of body or mind, I fully believe, are affected and modified by what has gone before, and never lose the impression of preceding states,—­and more particularly of anything like an overmastering habit—­or rather, I should say, in this case, of an overmastering affection.  The love, desire, or affection, whichever you may choose to call it, which you once felt for intoxicating drinks, or for the effects produced by them, never could have existed in the degree that they did, without leaving on your mind—­which is a something far more real and substantial than this material body, which never loses the marks and scars of former abuse—­ineradicable impressions.  The forms of old habits, if this be true, and that it so, I fully believe, still remain; and these forms are in the endeavour, if I may so speak, to be filled with the affections that once made them living and active.  Rigidly exclude everything that can excite these, and you are safe;—­but, to me it seems, that no experiment can be so dangerous, as one which will inevitably produce in these forms a vital activity.”

“That, it seems to me,” was the reply of one of the company, “is a little too metaphysical—­or rather, I should say, transcendental—­for, certainly, it transcends my powers of reasoning to be able to see how any permanent forms, as you call them, can be produced in the mind, as in the body—­the one being material, and the other immaterial, and, therefore, no more susceptible of lasting impressions, than the air around us.”

“You have not, I presume, given much thought to this subject,” the previous speaker said, “or you would not doubt, so fully, the truth of my remark.  The power of habit, a fact of common observance, which is nothing but a fixed form of the mind, illustrates it.  And, certainly, if the mind retained impressions no better than the air around us, we should remember but little of what we learned in early years.”

“I see,” was the reply to this, “that my remark was too broad.  Still, the memory of a thing is very different from a permanent and inordinate desire to do something wrong, remaining as a latent principle in the mind, and ready to spring into activity years afterwards, upon the slightest provocation.”