has long since exploded
The old notion that our bodies are changed every seven years, science
has long since exploded. 'The matter,' said Mr. John Goodsir, 'of the
organized frame to its minutest parts is in a continual flux.' Our
bodies are never the same for any two successive days. The feet that
Mary shall dance with next Christmas Eve will not be the same feet
that bore her triumphantly through the previous Christmas holidays.
The brain that she learns German with to-day does not contain a cell
in its convolutions that was spent in studying French one year ago.
Whether her present feet can dance better or worse than those of a
year ago, and whether her present brain can _do_ more or less German
and French than the one of the year before, depends upon how she has
used her feet and brain during the intervening time, that is, upon the
metamorphosis of her tissue.
