Susan had not been so apt a
pupil of Fanny Warham's as was Ruth, because Susan had not
Ruth's nature of the old-maidish, cut-and-dried conventional.
But during the whole fundamentally formative period of her life
Susan Lenox had been trained to order and system, and they had
become part of her being, beyond the power of drink and opium
and prostitution to disintegrate them until the general
break-up should come. In all her wanderings every man or woman
or girl she had met who was not rapidly breaking up, but was
offering more or less resistance to the assaults of bad habits,
was one who like herself had acquired in childhood strong good
habits to oppose the bad habits and to fight them with. An
enemy must be met with his own weapons or stronger. The
strongest weapons that can be given a human animal for
combating the destructive forces of the struggle for existence
are not good sentiments or good principles or even pious or
moral practices--for, bad habits can make short work of all
these--but are good habits in the practical, material matters
of life. They operate automatically, they apply to all the
multitude of small, every day; semi-unconscious actions of the
daily routine. They preserve the _morale_. And not morality
but morals is the warp of character--the part which, once
destroyed or even frayed, cannot be restored.
Susan, unconsciously and tenaciously practicing her early
training in order and system whenever she could and wherever
she could, had an enormous advantage over the mass of the
girls, both respectable and fast.
Pages:
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853