Transcriber's Note: The cover image was created from the title page by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

TRANSMISSION.

TRANSMISSION;

OR,

VARIATION OF CHARACTER

THROUGH

THE MOTHER.

BY
GEORGIANA B. KIRBY

NEW EDITION,

Revised and Enlarged.

NEW YORK:
FOWLER & WELLS, PUBLISHERS,
753 Broadway.
1882.

COPYRIGHT, 1877, BY

S. R. WELLS & COMPANY.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

[5]

In the following pages it is my wish to impress on women the grave truth, than which none can have more importance, that with them, with the mother, rests the greater power to mould for good or ill, for power or weakness, for beauty or deformity, the characters of her unborn children, and that with power comes the responsibility for its use.

Laying down a few self-evident propositions I shall illustrate the same by facts which have come under my own immediate notice during a period of nearly forty years, simply changing in each case the names of persons and locality.

The subject is by no means a new or original one. The principles involved are found scattered throughout all the journals which embody modern thought, and even find their way, accompanied by much contradiction, into our lighter literature. Yet it is certainly not universally understood that on the mother’s state of mind and body during pregnancy depend such vital interests.[6] The shadow thrown on the subject by false modesty keeps the masses in ignorance and arrests the upward progress of the race.

The mother’s office was, and is yet, by the majority held to be a secondary one and comparatively unimportant. “She merely nourishes the germ given by the father” is the common supposition. What singular infatuation is this when anatomy shows that the ova or eggs exist in the mother, and that the material supplied by the father vivifies them!

In ancient, as well as modern, times it was admitted that during the period of gestation the mother was keenly sensitive to hideous impressions, and was through this equal to the production of deformity and monstrosity. It seems strange that the converse of this did not suggest itself, so that her sensibility could have been tested for the creation of beauty and symmetry.

It was also seen that the pregnant woman could affect the temper, the disposition of her child by yielding to angry emotions, but she was not credited with the ability to convey a serenity and sweetness of nature surpassing her own.

Through all the dark ages that have preceded us, woman has known herself a slave with less questioning as to the rightfulness of the position awarded her by man than she is sensible of to-day. This was the inevitable order of development for primitive man. That the[7] unjust domination continues is but another proof of how unwillingly usurped power is relinquished.

The slave woman respects her master, not herself. The children she has borne have been the children of their father, not of their mother. Darwin declares that “qualities induced by circumstances inhere in that sex on which the circumstances operated,” passing by the opposite sex born of the same mothers. Thus women have given birth to independent sons and subservient daughters.

In civilized lands it is now almost universally admitted that conditions produce a race. The included truth that conditions, governed by invariable law, produce each individual of that race is scarcely recognized by the most enlightened, so deeply seated in the minds of men is the belief in woman’s inferiority and unimportance in the realm of causes.

“My children will represent ME,” is the unexpressed thought of nearly every father until the baseless assumption is slowly dispelled by the irresponsible mediocre children before him. Men, and women too, are astonished and perplexed when the superficial, but pleasing young wife of the man of genius proves the mother of dull boys and girls without possibilities. Still more incomprehensible to them is the mysterious Providence which has awarded the vicious or deficient child to the excellent and sensible couple, and presented the lazy[8] and disorderly one with a delicate saint, or an inventor. When the education, the training, had been exactly alike for all the children, why did the second or the sixth o’ertop the others in talent, high ambition, nobler presence? If the exceptional child were dull, the mother was held measurably responsible; if it were brilliant and beautiful, the qualities were traced back to some great-grandfather or grand-aunt of the father’s.

At length, if almost unwillingly, we have found the right track. In the early part of this century it began slowly to dawn on the minds of the most enlightened men that women were in a truer sense the mothers of the race than had been previously supposed, and through the influence of these pioneers in the world of ideas, woman begins to realize her great maternal power. With this knowledge, and the higher education now offered her in the schools, her character will broaden, her thoughts enlarge. Subserviency, personal gossip, and paltry rivalries will no more belong to her than to her brother. Courage and sincerity will belong to both, equally with purity and gentleness may we hope.

[9]

OR,

Variation of Character Through the Mother.

All nature, including human nature, is governed by immutable law.

All variation of character, physical and mental, takes place in fœtal life.

To the sensitiveness conferred by nature on the child-bearing woman is due her superior capacity to improve or degrade the race. To her varied mental, emotional, and physical conditions during her periods of gestation are due the widely different characters of the children born of the same parents.

Every quality, or its absence, in man or woman is there, or is wanting, by reason of conditions afforded or withheld for its incarnation through the parents.

The compass and tone of each individual is absolutely decided before birth.

[10]

The faculties actively used by the mother during pregnancy, rather than those lying latent and part of her original character, will be found prominent in her offspring.

Other things being equal, the children of youthful, immature parents will be inferior to those of the fully developed.

A marriage may, in itself, be perfect in every respect, yet owing to violation of natural or spiritual law by the parents, the offspring may be inferior to either or both.

A marriage may be very imperfect, and the parties to it very imperfect characters, yet, through the influence of happily elevating conditions surrounding and, as it were, pressing in on the mother, the children will be superior to both parents.

Education may modify, but never overrule inherited defects.

[11]

CONCEPTION.

Very much depends on the moment of union which precedes conception. Never run the risk of conception when you are sick or over-tired or unhappy; or when your husband is sick, or recovering from sickness, exhausted, or depressed, or when you are not in full sympathy with him, or when the children already yours claim for their welfare your entire strength and time. For the bodily condition of the child, its vigor and magnetic qualities, are much affected by the conditions ruling this great moment. Independent of the mutual, spiritual estate, the material supplied by the father for the vitalizing of the ovum, represents his THEN state of being, and will continue to represent it in the life it has helped to organize. If, therefore, this communicated principle be wanting in vitality or diseased, physical perfection in the child is not to be expected. This finest secretion of the man’s whole being—this subtle[12] essence of his nature, which is both spiritual and physical—should express his best possible condition. After this he can only affect the child indirectly through his influence on the mother’s mind.

The more highly-organized the mother, the more child-bearing exhausts her, because she is drained of her intellectual and spiritual forces. She, therefore, requires longer periods of rest and recuperation than the healthy, animal woman who can bear a child every two years for many succeeding years, and retain health and vigor.

Many of the most lovely, most charming, and altogether admirable women, become the inmates of insane asylums from having maternity thrust on them at too near periods of time.

For a child to be well born, his parents should be happily mated and in good health; the coming together should be mutual, and with a willingness, if not a desire, for parentage. Quite infrequent relations, if any, should take place up to the fourth month. This should, of course, be left entirely to the wife’s decision—to her feeling of what is right and best for her. I have known wives very desirous of having children, who, on finding themselves pregnant, could not help turning with glad affection to the father of the child. Nothing is as yet proved on this head, and there is no telling what magnetisms may or may not be furnished the[13] embryo at this early stage. Nature in the woman refuses to entertain the thought of sexual commerce after the fourth month.

SLEEPING.

There are many reasons which make it most unadvisable for husband and wife to occupy the same bed, and growing physiological knowledge will sooner or later effect a change in this, as in many other of our habits. In the first place, it is not desirable in this way to equalize the magnetism of the two parties. Part of the mutual attraction is thus lost. Then sleep is not so wholly undisturbed and refreshing as when one is quite alone. But most important of all, the mere fact of contact often arouses the animal when the will and judgment are asleep, and a base union takes place, which is followed by regret, shame, and bodily weakness.

A late writer on marriage, parentage, and kindred subjects takes the ground that the sexual attraction exists solely for the production of offspring. He gives the impression that, unless the minds of the parties concerned are filled with the desire for parentage, the physical union is wholly sensual and unjustifiable. Here the experience of the very best men and women who should certainly give us a standard, if one is possible, goes contrary to this view, and certainly we ought not to discard this testimony for that of the unspiritual animal[14] world, especially when this varies from the human in being polygamous, and each season choosing another mate; neither can it be supposed that the animal of intuition creates offspring.

Then again, unless denied children, a man never has a thought of parentage in that all-absorbing moment. It is his wife—the woman he adores, to whom he is drawn as by an invisible magnet, and children originating in this tender and impassioned embrace will be thus far magnetic and well-born children. A desire for parentage is as good as the love of woman, no doubt; but since it is in the order of nature for a man to be concerned for the woman alone, should we interfere?

With regard to the best hour in the twenty-four for originating a new life, I differ from most authors. Love is most private and interior, shunning vulgar observation and the glaring light, therefore the quiet hours of early morning best befit the expression of it.

Not many hundred years will elapse before the earth will be sufficiently populated. Then large families of children will be a curse instead of a blessing, and parents will be obliged to limit their powers of reproduction to two children only. Will they then reduce the exercise of the amative faculty to two occasions? We have yet much to discover on this head.

[15]

AMATIVENESS.

Since in the minds of many good and otherwise intelligent women much confusion exists respecting the actual marriage or “sexual union,” it is desirable that we make some remarks on that organ of the brain on which rests conjugal love—namely, Amativeness.

No other single organ of the brain has so commanding an influence on the whole nature as this much-slandered faculty. The very word itself is held attaint. Yet it is this power, in woman as well as man, that gives beauty and symmetry to form and feature, grace and sweetness to manners and voice, and sympathy and charity to the soul. All the heroism that has redeemed the past from utter and disgusting barbarism, has sprung out of the love of man for woman; not the Friendship, but the Love, whose completest expression—that which most softened and refined the man, strengthened and sustained the woman—was the perfect union of soul and body demanded by itself. And spite of its gross and cruel record, amativeness is to-day, as it always has been, the principal guarantee for the higher development of humanity. Without it genius is impossible, capacity for large enjoyments, attractiveness, a segment of the circle is wanting, making all the rest incomplete and defective.

Because of the hitherto undue activity of this organ[16] and its apparent fickleness, many philosophers have given friendship a higher place than love in the economy of human life. But let us extinguish this passion in the heart, leaving friendship to its widest experience, and we should soon sink down to the level of the Chinese, whose brutal contempt for woman expressed in every fable and proverb, and illustrated in the national countenance, precludes to them all advancement.

Man appears to have been superendowed with amativeness since first he stood erect. Inferior intellect and strong passions characterized the primitive man. And as the head of the modern man still awaits the arch, he continues to be intemperate on this side of his nature, and to dominate woman in such degree as suits his pleasure. Over-indulgence is followed by a sense of shame, of disgust; and as this habit of excess was and is universal, man has learned to separate this passion from what he calls his higher nature, and brand it as degrading, sensual, shameful. The helpless, the willing subjection of woman in marriage has served to lower yet more the character of the relation.

The Church has taught that marriage is a sensual estate, including one major-general and one private. A profound contempt for nature is inherited with the blood, and is confirmed in us by experience.

Now, science and philosophy prove that sin, evil, wickedness, mean merely a want of balance among[17] faculties in themselves good. How weak is a man without sufficient firmness, yet how unamenable is he who possesses too large a share. How valuable is acquisitiveness with conscience and the reasoning powers fully developed. Without the latter, acquisitiveness purloins cash and jewelry.

Excess of amativeness—the faculty most blindly abused hitherto—has worked most cruel wrong. Goaded by stimulants it has murdered its willing slave, sought satisfaction in promiscuous relations which destroy conjugal love, changing it to lust,—levied tax on the other organs of the brain, dragging them with itself to a shameful death.

The difference between Love and Lust is the difference between heaven and hell. Love seeks only the happiness of the being loved, and is as refined in its most private as in its public demeanor. Lust cares only for selfish, animal gratification, without regard to the slave who gives enforced consent.

That an act absolutely necessary to the continuance of the race, animal, human, and vegetable, and the principle of which governs even the mineral world, should be in itself, and under right conditions, considered coarse, is but evidence of our own ignorance. We reason a priori that when the entire being consents, the spiritual as well as the affectional, the act of union is as pure in its character as the blossoming of the lily[18] or the rose. The pure, unselfish love of a noble man, when carried to its ultimate with a happily responsive wife, should be as free from shame as the opening violet. Emotion is as divine as thought. Could it be necessary, or even possible, for a merely sensual act to originate a being like Margaret Fuller, or Hawthorne, or the author of Shakespeare’s plays? He who replies in the affirmative is unbalanced and unnatural.

To common observation the more reverent and kindly demeanor of the lad as he approaches puberty demonstrates the refining, ameliorating nature of conjugal love.

The radiant countenance of the modest wife, the harmonious faces of the chaste and loving pair, justify their lives.

Marriage is a partnership for the higher development of each party, and the continuance of the race.

Under the past régime the highly organized and more individualized American woman has had her capacity for conjugal emotion almost annihilated. And this constantly repeats itself in her children as the abused mother transmits to her son the abnormal passions of his father, and to her daughter her own feeble, outraged conjugal capacity.

This state of things will continue as long as women grow up ignorant of the laws of their own being; as long as mothers bring up their sons and daughters in[19] absolute ignorance of what is right and wrong in marriage—the mother thinking she is modest and refined when she blushes before the honest facts of nature.

What father instructs his son before marriage as to his behavior under that most sacred bond? What mother advises with her daughter, assuring her that she is to be the judge and regulator in her private life with her husband? Too often the health of both is impaired, and the mutual attraction destroyed, because knowledge came too late. Instead of this, the young wife should be proud to say, “My mother taught me that this relation should take place very seldom. We shall be less happy if we are intemperate.” The man who married her because he loved and admired her, would willingly be guided by her to a true continence. As it is, she evades the responsibility, and abandons soul and body to the undisciplined will of one as ignorant of law as herself. Here, as elsewhere, men, and women too, persuade themselves that subserviency in woman is lovely as in a man it is contemptible.

A superstition is common among the ignorant that every whim, every craving of the pregnant woman should be gratified, or the child will be “marked.” I once heard of a woman who, shortly before her confinement,[20] insisted on having a pint of whisky, and because it was thought best to give her only half a pint, the child was never satisfied and drank himself to death.

It is true that the very great change in the system, the forces now specially drawn to the womb which before were equally distributed throughout the body, leaves the stomach often in a very delicate condition, needing more acid or less, more flesh and less vegetable diet, or the reverse, as the case may be, and there should certainly be no pains spared in providing the mother with the food that she can relish and digest, or in her yielding to her innocent and harmless fancies. The first months are often wearisome and depressing. She feels restless and unsettled, and should be treated with patient sympathy even if she seems a little unreasonable.

But the patient should never resign her own judgment and conscience. Gross feeding, excess of meats, gravies, pastry, wine, etc., should be avoided if desired. Over-eating is nearly as bad as over-drinking, and a sense of repletion after meals should be a warning that the intemperance must not be repeated. It is very plain that if the pregnant woman used her will in denying herself that which she knew to be unwholesome, or in excess of sufficient, the child would be more likely to inherit self-control. The true mother will[21] have constant reference to the well-being of the child she is bearing, and she will have ample reward.

BIRTH-MARKS.

Birth-marks, whether unimportant in character, or amounting to deformity, are to be referred not so much to the first impression made on the mother’s mind, as to her subsequent and frequent reproduction of the image. The unfurnished mind of the illiterate woman seizes on and retains the ugly or grotesque picture, which another rich in thought and experience would have dismissed at once. Thus we see club-feet, strabismus, and other physical defects almost confined to the lower orders of the people.

Be this as it may, the mother should turn away on principle from the unpleasant object or circumstance, and occupy herself by an exercise of her will with something agreeable. If she acts thus, all will be safe.

DEFICIENT CHILDREN.

The union of young persons, affectionate, but unintellectual and ignorant of law, is followed, not unfrequently, by more or less deficiency in the first child. No restraint is put on the passions, as it is believed that after the legal ceremony has taken place any amount of indulgence is permissible.

More cases of deficiency are found in the families of[22] the rich, and of the brutalized and ignorant poor, than in households whose moderate circumstances necessarily force some domestic duties on the wife. The simplest household labors involve the exercise of calculation, perception, order and judgment, not to mention the good to the body of the exercise of many sets of muscles. Consider, then, the loss to the unborn where wealth has secured abundant service and the pregnant condition is made an excuse for indolence and over-indulgence!

If the young couple have planned their life wisely; if they are hospitably inclined, it may be musical and social at once, and the wife especially take some kindly interest in the welfare of those less favored than themselves, all will be safe so far as the intellect is concerned; and if the delicate consideration and courtesy felt and shown before marriage by each to the other continue after the union is consummated, a happy temperament, a pleasing natural manner may be expected for the child.

But if these conditions do not exist, the first child will be greatly inferior to those that follow it, since the most indolent and selfish mother will expend some thought on her own little one after its arrival.

Habits of intoxication in either parent result in offspring who prove to be non compos mentis, if not[23] drivelling idiots. No wife should cohabit with an inebriate. The greatest sin that can be committed is to create a child who must of necessity be a degraded or helpless creature. Even if he escape these worst consequences, he will be of quite inferior organization to those born of temperance.

It would be well if the unmarried would visit asylums where idiots and inebriates bear testimony to their ante-natal conditions.

OVER-EXERTION.

Over-exertion during pregnancy is almost as hurtful as indolence, depriving the unborn of those vital forces necessary to a well-constituted existence.

In no country called civilized does the pregnant woman overtax her strength as she does in these United States. This fact is quite sufficient to account for the very general want of robustness, vigor, and firm health, especially among our women. I refer here principally to our farmers’ and mechanics’ wives.

The farmer’s brood mare is carefully considered. She is exercised gently lest her progeny suffer deterioration. But the farmer’s wife, the mother of his progeny, who are to do him honor by their virtues, or cast reproach upon him by their mediocrity or vices, is over-worked every day of each of the nine months of each period that is to decide his case.

[24]

When the mare has performed the labor that is good for her, she is turned into the sunny pasture for the rest of the day. But there is no considerate arrangement for the wife’s walking in green meadows to drink in the beauties of nature, and absorb the invigorating sunlight when she has had as much exercise as is good for her. She cooks and scours, washes and irons, makes and mends, churns, quilts, makes preserves, pickles, rag mats, washes dishes three times a day, saves and contrives (than which nothing is so wearing on the mind), attends the meetings of her religious society, helping at their fairs and socials; it is probable she takes a boarder or two in the summer, keeps up a limited correspondence with her family, and goes to bed every night so exhausted of her forces, that sleep has to be waited for, rising unrested to begin over again the dreary daily routine.

You say she has wonderful energy and ability. But why does she not give her children the benefit of her ambition and faculty? She put all the vitality, all the magnetism that belonged to her little daughter, into the kettles and pans, into the soap and butter. The butter may sell well in the market, but it will not atone for the absence of resource in her child.

Her boys are slow to apprehend, and will never aspire beyond the three R’s. They lounge instead of sitting, and walk without dignity.

The girls lack stamina, and have not their mother’s[25] ambition to “put the work through.” Poor things! They do not know that they were born tired, or they would offer that as an excuse. They are lacking in the magnetism that attracts, in the hopefulness and health that makes every day a satisfaction.

If the husband, on his farm, or in his factory, or store, has extra or increasing work, he forthwith hires more help; but as child after child add to the responsibilities and labors of the home, the mother struggles on unassisted, until at last she becomes a hopeless invalid, or sinks at middle age under her burdens, leaving her husband with his accumulated means to marry a younger woman, who sits in the parlor, hires plenty of servants—now considered quite necessary—and has a good time generally, on the savings of her predecessor.

It is the conscientious, self-sacrificing woman who thus wears her life out so unnecessarily. She thinks it her duty. Her husband’s labor has profits attending it—hers, none. Most fatal mistake! Her maternal office was her first and highest. If she filled that well, she did a more important and profitable work than any that could fall to her husband. And it is plain enough that when such domestic services as hers have to be hired, they have a very decided money value.

As an illustration[1] of the dangers of over-work, I will[26] cite the case of a boy born of well-to-do parents in —— County, Kentucky. There were several children older and one younger than the lad in question. This youngest boy had a brain of the very best calibre. Talent, latent energy, and determination were written in every line of the child’s face. “He has the will of a Napoleon,” said his father, and this was true.

The brother of whom I would speak was five years the senior of master Jefferson, a boy with a very large head, lack-lustre eyes, and a mixture of amiability and apathy in his air and manner. He relished neither work, or study, or play. I boarded in the family, and had ample opportunity for exact observation of the very different characters composing it. The parents were unusually rugged and hearty, and the children, with this one exception, took after them.

When, by careful steps, I led the mother back to the summer preceding dull Charley’s birth, she was able to recall quite vividly the circumstances that had surrounded her, and the kind of life she led.

“Had she,” I asked, “been unhappy?”

“Oh, dear no; she had had nothing to be unhappy about.”

“Was she sick during any part of her pregnancy? Had she felt her condition a greater tax on her powers than was usual with her?”

[27]

“No; on the contrary, she had been filled with ambition.”

Her husband’s mother was making her first visit with them, and she was anxious to prove to her how good and “smart” a woman her son had married. Business had taken her husband away from home (he was a horse and cattle trader, and was often absent months at a time), and she had desired to surprise him on his return by all she had accomplished.

“Why, you would hardly believe it if I should tell you all I compassed that summer before Charley was born. I wove a whole piece of butternut, and made my husband a complete suit—a new one for Johnny, too. I put up sweet pickles, and preserves, and apple butter enough to last more than a year. We only had Aunt ’Liza and that lazy, fat Tish in the kitchen, and Jake for out-doors, and Aunt ’Liza wasn’t much account that summer, for she had her little Ben a month before Charley came. But nothing seemed to trouble me. Husband wrote that he was doing right well, and every time put in some nice words for me, and how he longed to see us all. So I worked and worked. I remember how tired I was when night came. I was always accounted a sound sleeper, but that summer I could not sleep. I heard the big clock in the entry strike one and two half the time.”

[28]

Here, you see, the mother’s activity gave the large head, while what should have filled it with compact brain went into the butternut and preserves.

I have known women stand at the ironing-table ready to drop with fatigue, while they smoothed out the last crease from the kitchen towel.

It is a growing custom to embroider under-garments, night-dresses, etc. Such work is extremely fascinating, and women who can not afford to purchase it, will often allow themselves to stitch far into the night. This tends to make a child narrow-chested and short-sighted, and is unfavorable to good looks, and the embroidered garments do not make it as attractive as would a serene and sunny disposition. Grace is said to depend on excess of power. Insufficiency of power precludes this quality, which is even more fascinating than beauty itself.

There are, unfortunately, among all classes, women who can not, or do not, extend their thoughts beyond the trimming on their skirts, or the last small scandal. Alas! for the high-minded, true-hearted man who unites his destiny with one of these. Her aims are paltry, and his fine traits in her keeping are changed to littleness. She clings to her petty interests, and he can no more inspire her with larger views than he can mould a marble[29] image. She represents herself in her children. His descendants through her progress backward, and he is obliged to admit that woman has the greater power in the formation of character.

After what has been said it will be seen that no greater mistake can be made than for a mother, while creating immortals, to drudge and scrimp for the sake of being some day well, or better off. While she has thus slaved, sparing herself no restful hours in which to enjoy the beauty of flower or field, in which to contemplate a beautiful face or graceful figure in real life or picture, in which to enjoy music or the creations of genius in literature, she has fixed irrevocably for this world the unsatisfactory status of her children who will so poorly adorn the new house when it is one day built.

There is a ministry without us visible and invisible, and angels find it difficult to approach with gifts the mother absorbed by household drudgery.

[This, with the account of the New Berlin Prostitute, was communicated to me by my friend, Mrs. E. W. Farnham.]

In a remote hamlet in one of the then young Western States, Mrs. F. became acquainted with a family which included nearly a dozen members, and nearly all married, and settled within easy distance of the old homestead. The sexes were pretty equally[30] divided, each and every one of these young men and women being in appearance and character below mediocrity, with one exception. The latter was a young girl about nineteen years old, who was so evidently and remarkably superior both in personal appearance and nature, that it did not seem possible she could belong to the same family. Beside the heavy, coarse faces of her brothers and sisters, hers was angelic in its graceful contour, long-fringed lids and refined, expressive mouth. The very curly hair, which resembled the mother’s only in its curliness, had a golden glint that removed it by several degrees of relationship from the wiry red on one side and faded black on the other, which crowned the broad, low heads of the gruff brothers and two drowsy-looking married sisters who were at this time home on a long visit.

This girl, now the successful teacher of the district-school, filled her place in the always untidy, dilapidated household, unconscious of being an anomaly. She had made some effort to brighten the dingy walls, and here and there the uneven floor of the living-room was concealed by pretty rag-mats of her making.

Notwithstanding the inferiority of the family as a whole, there was a general friendliness among the members, proceeding from the rough, but unfailing deference shown by the father to the mother. Nelly’s wishes received a sort of grumbling attention, and her[31] opinion was quoted as having weight. Still, owing to the very refined character of her attractions, they were evidently to a great extent overlooked by all but her mother.

Mrs. F. was a long while in getting hold of any clue that would explain this phenomenon.

No, Nelly was not born in that low dwelling under the shadow of those catalpas, but in a poorer shanty in Northern Tennessee.

No, there were no nice people thereabouts; no kind Methodist preacher visited them. They were sort of outside the “circuit.”

No, there was no school-teacher boarded with them. There was quite a spell when there was a quarrel about whose land the school-house occupied, and school didn’t keep more than three months any way.

In view of so much content in the midst of so much dirt and disorder, it did not seem worth while to ask if any one had lent her books which pleased her. However, the conversation evidently recalled pleasant memories, for the weather-beaten countenance of the kind-hearted old woman suddenly lit up, and her small eyes twinkled with happy light as she said:

“We were awful poor about those times, and there was no look-out for anything better. Some of the boys had come up here to see if they couldn’t get better land. But we had no money to buy it with if there[32] was, and there was a book I must tell you about—a book that lifted me right out of myself. You see there came along a peddler—’twas a wonder how he ever got to such an out-of-the-way place—well, he unpacked his traps, and among them was a little book with a lovely green and gold cover. ’Twas the sweetest little thing you ever saw, and there was just the nicest picture in the front. I saw ’twas poetry, and on the first page it said, ‘The Lady of the Lake;’ that was all. I did want that book, and I had a couple of dollars in a stocking-foot on the chimney-shelf, but a dollar was a big thing then, and I didn’t feel as if I ought to indulge myself, so I said no, and saw him pack up his things and travel.

“Then I could think of nothing but that book the rest of the day, I wanted it so bad, and at night I couldn’t sleep for thinking of it. At last I got up, and without making a bit of noise, dressed myself, and walked four miles to Scranton Centre, where the peddler had told me he should stay that night—at the Browns—friends of ours, they were, and I got him up, and bought the book, and brought it back with me, just as contented and satisfied as you can believe. I looked it over and through, put it under my pillow, and slept soundly till morning.

“The next day I began to read the beautiful story. Every page took that hold of me that I forgot all about the pretty cover, and perhaps you wouldn’t believe[33] it, but before Nelly was born, if you would but give me a word here and there, I could begin at the beginning, and say it clear through to the end. It appeared to me I was there with those people by the lakes in the mountains—with Allan bane and his harp, Ellen Douglas, Malcolm Graeme, Fitz-James, and the others. I saw Ellen’s picture before me when I was milking the cow, or cooking on the hearth, or weeding the little garden. There she was, stepping about so sweetly in the rhyme, that I felt it to be all true as the day, more true after I could repeat it to myself. And then when I found my baby grew into such a pretty girl, and so smart too, it seemed as if Providence had been ever so good to me again. But children are mysteries any way. I’ve wondered a thousand times why Nelly was such a lady, and why she loved to learn so much more than the other children. She has read to me ever since she was ten years old, and she’s got quite a lot of books there, you see, ma’am. She’s mighty fond of poetry, too.”

RESULTS OF UNUSED TALENT.

To illustrate the advantages of healthful duties and self-esteem, and the evils following want of occupation, I will give the experience of an old friend, a former resident of this State. For convenience I will call her Mrs. Hosmer.

[34]

This daughter of an orderly and peaceful home, in Western New York, became engaged when quite young to an intelligent young man, who afterward became foreman in her father’s iron-works. Several years elapsed before the young man felt at liberty to take on himself the cares and expenses of a family. He sought to expedite matters by obtaining a California agency from a large hardware establishment. This took him from home, and pending the decision, he became intimately acquainted with another young woman possessing marked personal attractions, different entirely from those of his long time fiancée. News of his supposed disloyalty reached his betrothed simultaneously with his return to his native town with the agency in his pocket—ready for the ceremony, and removal to California. The beauty, and alert, independent ways of the young woman in question, were set forth to the betrothed in a manner calculated to depress her own self-esteem, and raise a doubt of her lover’s satisfaction in her, but not enough doubt, she thought, to justify an explanation, or to impede the marriage, which therefore took place at once.

In San Francisco, Mrs. Hosmer found herself in what are considered most fortunate circumstances, i. e., she had nothing to do, and had no need of doing anything. She was a born housekeeper and a skillful cook, but in a boarding-house these talents remained unexercised.[35] She was a neat and swift seamstress, but her mother having supplied her with the usual superfluity of garments included in a wedding outfit, her talent lay dormant in this direction also. Then she was amongst strangers, shy, and unacquainted with others needing assistance. So, while her husband was at his place of business, her sole thought was—bearing in mind her imaginary rival—Is Martin satisfied with me? Is he happy? Will he think this dress becoming to me?

Mr. Hosmer went and came, wholly ignorant of the doubt in his wife’s mind. He was now jovial and unreserved, now abstracted and anxious, as business promised success or failure; but always gentle and considerate with his wife. The latter was a sisterly rather than a wifely person. There was, therefore, a lack of spontaneity in the union, yet no real unhappiness on either side.

In due time a babe was born—a girl—my acquaintance with whom commenced when she was about eighteen; a fair, graceful creature, with a small head on a large, well-proportioned body, soft, helpless, imploring blue eyes, a rosebud mouth, and a peculiar, plaintive tone in her speaking voice.

She had just left a private school, where for years she had gone through books mechanically, coached for examinations by her good-natured, brighter companions. She wrote a neat hand and a limited amount of correct[36] English. But she could never explain a page of her natural philosophy or algebra, and could not reason on any subject more profound than the making of a dress or the dressing of her hair. She was an amiable, affectionate, incapable, timid girl, who always leaned on others for support.

Now, this weak-minded girl had a sister two years her junior, as unlike, except in the color of her hair, eyes, and complexion, as any two persons could be. Where Rosy was insignificantly pretty, Charlotte was commandingly handsome. Firmness, courage, self-reliance, reasoning faculty, she had in marked measure. She was already through the high-school studies, taking a year’s rest between that and the university, while her mother made the long-wished-for visit East; delighted to be mistress of the house, since she was practically skilled in domestic arts herself.

Having previously learned the circumstances that had so impressed themselves on Rosa, I longed to understand how Mrs. Hosmer was situated before the birth of her second daughter.

“Were you still boarding when you were pregnant with Charlotte?” I asked, one day. “She carries herself with so much dignity, she has so much conscious power that it does not seem as if she could be related to Rosy.”

“Bless you, no,” she replied, laughing. “We were[37] keeping house then, and I had the sole care of Captain Rimes’ three children. Their mother had died, you remember. Father sent me our old Nora, and she was a great help to me. Still, I had plenty of responsibility, and not a little labor besides. But I had gotten over all my fears about Martin’s not being happy. He fairly worshiped Rosy, and was so proud when people called her a fairy, as they always did. People said we were the handsomest couple that walked up the aisle in Starr King’s church. Then, principally, I had no time to make trouble by analyzing my face in the glass and proving to myself that I was a fright, as I used to do.”

CONSTRUCTIVENESS AND ARTISTIC TENDENCY.

Jannette, a well-balanced, conscientious young woman, had married a sign-painter, who kept strictly within the limits of his business. She had now three children, healthy, nice-looking, docile children, but without any special characteristics. They had been living in a rented house, but now Jannette’s father, having met with success in some business venture, purchased for his daughter a good lot, on which they were able to build a moderate house. Mrs. T. at this time was pregnant with her fourth child, and she entered, with the zest such good fortune would naturally call out, into the planning and replanning the new home, so as to secure the maximum of space, comfort, and architectural[38] beauty out of their modest means. With this her thoughts were occupied during the day, and the evenings were passed advising together over the height of doors and windows, the odd spaces for closets, the precise wood for the different floors. This was during the latter half of the rainy season. The storms once over, the lumber was hauled, and the house put up forthwith.

It now became necessary, with the last remnant of the savings before her, as basis and limit to her operations, to calculate what, of the new furniture needed, could be bought. The papering also must be considered.

“I want a touch of what is called the artistic in our room and the sitting-room, if we can’t do more. Let me help to choose the wall-paper. I shall have to see it every minute of the day,” she said.

A first-class Brussels carpet, somewhat worn, was bought at auction. This was so remodeled as to appear new and elegant. A fringed lambrequin for the mantel-shelf (which was not marble); a few pretty, but cheap, brackets; a few photographs of fine paintings, which had lain out of sight for years, made into passe-partouts, and hung judiciously. Pretty imitation chintz curtains, with lambrequin top, for the bed-room; sheer muslin, lined with Turkey-red, for the living-room; well-fitting chintz covers for the old couch and armchair, the colors made to harmonize with carpet and[39] wall-paper, which latter was, of course, neutral-tinted; a hanging-basket, already well-filled and growing, in each window; a few inexpensive, urn-shaped vases for flowers; a graceful evening lamp. This last Jannette feared an extravagance, but “it will be so restful to our eyes; think of it, dear, every evening.”

When all was ready, a house-warming was given, and was not our little wife proud of her success? She really had not realized before her own talent and good taste. “I am sure, Mr. T., you must have spent hundreds of dollars on all this,” said Mr. T.’s partner’s wife, who frowned severely on all extravagance. Jannette shook her head and smiled.

And now, in a few weeks, all was ready for the newcomer—Master Thomas Bliss Trescott, as he was named. In after years the mother still remembered the pleasure she had had in the arrangement of their lovely home, but she did not connect that fact with the sterling intellect and marked artistic ability of her fourth child (and second son), notwithstanding that he was seen by all to be head and shoulders above the rest in all that makes a man.

No influence, excepting the desire to dislodge and so murder the unborn, has so damaging an effect on the character of the child as jealousy. I have but too[40] often seen the workings of this emotion and its consequent evils.

I once lived in the house of a good-hearted young Irish woman, the mother of two girls, respectively two and five years old. The younger was a happy, rollicking little dot, needing small care, and finding amusement in everything about her.

The older child, a coarse, distorted likeness of her mother in form and feature, presented a strong contrast to her sister. There was a sly, malicious expression in her light blue eyes—at times a vicious leer so horrible in childhood. I used to watch her at my leisure, and have seen her deliberately stick a pin into her sister and push her down, standing silently pleased to see she was hurt.

“Do you see how different in disposition your two girls are?” I one day asked the mother.

“Oh! sure, I do, Miss,” she replied, “and I don’t see why the good God give Katy thim ways she has. She angers me that much sometimes, that I could just kill her, I could, when I see her wid me own eyes pinch the baby, and the darlint looking up as innocent, smilin’, wid the tears in her eyes, as if she didn’t believe it, nohow.”

“Did you live here among these beautiful hills before Katy was born?” I asked.

“Shure an’ I did, Miss, and me husband worked in the factory yonder.”

[41]

“The scenery is so lovely round here, that if, as you say, you have a good husband, you ought to have been happy all the time. Were you quite as happy when you were carrying Katy as you were with Molly?”

“Happy, is it, you say, Miss? an’ shure whin me husband was tuk up wid another woman, how could I be happy? An’ he a spending his money on her, too, an’ the wages got lower, an’ it’s not the money that riled me neither, it’s me as was but a few months married, an’ in a strange counthrie, and he a riding more nor three times wid her in a chaise, it is. Och! but he’d been over and larnt the wicked ways before iver he brought me here. Faith, me heart was broken, it was, an’ I hated that woman so, I was longing all the time to lay me hands on her. I’d liked to have murthered the old divil, an’ I wanted to go to the factory an’ inform on her, but me husband cursed me, and threatened to kill me if I did.”

I knew her husband, and he was a very fair specimen of the better class of Irish laborers. He behaved himself very well, I thought, and was never tired of playing with the baby Molly. It was by slow observation I discovered that illicit relations make a man cruel, brutal to the wife he deserts.

“And was he still behaving so badly while you were bearing the baby Molly?” I asked.

“The saints be praised, no, Miss. The woman moved[42] away a bit after Katy was born. Bad ’cess to her, and Pat giv’ up his bad ways afther, and trated me rale well, too. The baste of a woman niver come back, an’ I tuk no more throuble consarning her.”

“That was sensible and kind, too, in you,” I said; “but it would have been better for poor Katy if she had gone sooner. You see, you put all your hatred of that woman into Katy, and she is not so good or so pretty in consequence.”

“An’ do you mane to say, Miss, that God could make me Katy bad, an’ me a sufferin’ too?”

“Well, but did not she lie right under your heart when you were longing to lay hands on that wicked woman? All your feelings went with the blood that nourished her every day through all those months. It was a sad chance for her, poor child.”

It was some time before the good creature could accept an idea so foreign to her crude opinions on the subject. But she saw at last how it must be. She promised to control her temper (she was again pregnant), and I advised her not to be severe in her treatment of poor Katy, but to give her a little garden in the poorly-fenced lot, with some cheap seeds to plant to occupy her mind; and for herself, she should not dwell on Katy’s looks and imperfections, but enjoy Molly all she could, and sing every day some of her sweet Irish songs.

[43]

During courtship it is the habit of the mind to avoid all topics on which disagreement is anticipated. This comes of a longing for sympathy, and a fear of losing whatever degree of it is possible between the parties. It is a dangerous course, and imperils future happiness, because after marriage all disguises are sure to be dropped, and the want of harmony in opinion and feeling becomes at once prominent.

Under such circumstances an excellent young man of our acquaintance, whom we will call N., became the husband of a lady of equally admirable, but wholly different character, by name C. A few months of married life sufficed to reveal the width of the gulf between them. It could not be ignored. Their estimate of individuals, actions, looks, were always at variance. Shrinking from the pain of dissent, C. learned to limit her conversation to the very simplest matters of household occurrence, then to the baby, who seemed to have inherited all the inharmony of the alliance, never content, always awake.

Other children were born to them, capable, conscientious children, wanting serene affection and contentment, as only love can beget love. So the years went on, when circumstances threw N. almost daily into the society of one of those women who appeal directly to the passions of a man—a handsome animal, with no scruples of conscience as to the misery she might bring[44] on another woman. N. felt more at home in the company of one below his own plane, than with one who was above it, and plunged at once into what is politely termed a liason.

While this affair was at its height, C. found herself pregnant; and her husband expressing his annoyance at the prospect of another child, and dreading the effect on the child of her own desolation and sense of wrong, she would have rejoiced could she have brought on the menstrual flow. Finding this an impossibility at so early a stage, and unwilling to risk injuring the child later on, she made up her mind to do her “level best” and bear it. By sheer force of will, and by the most passionate prayer for help from Above, to enable her to live above her surroundings, to save her from bearing malice; shutting her eyes to the cruel insensibility of N. and his affinity, keeping them open to the needs of others, she lived day by day, working, aspiring, dreading lest her efforts should fail to save her child, determined that he should be saved.

The effect of her high endeavor astonished even herself. She had lifted him above the clouds and put him en rapport with greater good and wiser wisdom than came to the other children. His nature proved to be hopeful and trustful, with more affection to bestow on the mother who had thus struggled for him, than sons[45] usually feel for mothers, and more force of intellect than easier conditions would have ensured.

Could any instance more fully prove the mother’s peculiar power in moulding the constitution of her child? The father’s thoughts were all engrossed with his mistress. The mother’s persistent, intelligent, unselfish aspiration alone saved her son from being the spiritual brother of poor Katy—the child of malice.

THE NEW BERLIN PROSTITUTE.

The following illustrates the fearful consequences of sexual indulgence during pregnancy:

“Charlotte and I were school-mates and dear friends ever since I can remember anything,” said the young woman. “Our parents had been friends before us. I think we were equals in every sense, except that Lotty was handsomer than I. We became engaged and were married on the same day, when I was twenty-one and she twenty-two years of age. Our husbands are both honorable and kind men, and so far as our married lives are concerned, we have both been well situated.

“In about the usual time after marriage we found ourselves pregnant, and as we lived not far distant from each other, we made our babies’ wardrobes in company, anticipating, with much pleasure, the already dear children.

[46]

“We had passed the fifth month, when Lotty, for the first time, alluded to her most private life with her husband, saying she was so glad that she could respond so fully to his demands. It had not been so at first, but now the relation occurred almost every night, and she experienced quite as much emotion as he did, to his very great satisfaction.

“I made an exclamation of surprise, and then was silent. My own experience had been entirely opposed to hers, but I knew nothing of right or wrong in such matters; I had nothing to reply.

“In due time, to our great delight, we each held a daughter in our arms. Other children followed pretty close on their track, and our meetings, though no less cordial, became less frequent. The years flew past on swift wing. Our eldest children were thirteen years old; mine a refined, conscientious, reliable girl; hers too mature bodily, and with a rather handsome, but positive, sensual face. In order—as they intended—to check the forwardness of her manners, she was sent to boarding-school. Here she climbed out of the window at night, and having had an intrigue with a boy belonging to an academy near by, was expelled from the institution. The parents entreated, bribed, threatened, with no signs of improvement on her part. Finally, when this poor child wanted two months of reaching her fifteenth year, she left her home, and of her own[47] free will became the inmate of a brothel. Once or twice, through the help of a detective, she was recovered; but only to escape again to follow the life that suited her organization.

“Her father’s head was bowed with grief. The mother became hard and irritable, growing to hate the child who had brought on them so much sorrow and shame. I grieved for them, but I never understood the case till I heard you speak of the mother’s power over her unborn child. Now I see that Maria was the victim of her parents’ ignorance.”[2]

VIOLATION OF SEXUAL LAW DURING PREGNANCY.

I will briefly refer to another instance where the child so fatally endowed was a boy.

The sisters of this boy—women of some presence—were[48] already married, and mothers, when their mother found herself pregnant at forty-five. The husband was much gratified at the prospect of becoming a father at sixty, and expressed this satisfaction in frequent relations with his wife. It so happened that their pecuniary circumstances were easier than at any previous time, and the wife employed “help,” which relieved her of all the severer household duties. She was not an intellectual or cultivated woman, and the unaccustomed leisure did not prove a boon, since it left her with unspent strength to meet and respond to the demands made upon her quite up to the time of the infant’s arrival. Thus, you see, the boy had imparted to him over-active amativeness, combined with small mental activities. How should he when a man restrain his passions, when during all his ante-natal life his parents had put no restraint on theirs? He did not. He showed himself a low bully among his school-mates, and the dread of the younger girls, before he had reached his “teens.” After that, his sensual, brutal behavior actually repelled his boy-companions. When a man, he barely escaped being the inmate of a prison, as he had been already of worse places.

The man who is dominated by this one quality is very often handsome, magnetic, and attractive to women. He boasts privately, if not publicly, of his conquests, holding no reputation sacred.

[49]

Perhaps to common observation he is a gentleman, and you hear of his liasons in a whisper. Alas! for the wives of these gay cavaliers. They lead a lonely life, since he spends the best of himself—his suave manners and good nature—in fact, all of himself elsewhere.

Suddenly and all unexpectedly you hear that this attractive man, not forty-five, is sinking down with some insidious disease. It is called neuralgia in the head, or paralysis, and the doctor has the promise of a long job. It is, in fact, softening of the brain, caused by excessive passional excitement and the undue drain on his vital forces. He may live years, his digestive organs holding out better, because having drifted into idiocy there is no longer any wear and tear of the mind.

This man has been “successful” with women, and this is the finale.

Mr. Z., a man of thirty-five, of a refined, intellectual, but rather cold nature, married his ward, an amiable, immature girl of fifteen. Her attraction for him lay in her youthful affection and her healthy, handsome, physical characteristics. She had in her the “makings” of a thoughtful, self-reliant woman; but development in natural order was arrested by her being placed in so false a position—a wife at scarcely fifteen.

[50]

Very soon after the marriage she found herself pregnant. Meanwhile, Mr. Z. for love of her and for the sake of companionship, earnestly endeavored to awaken in her some intellectual tastes. He read to her, explaining and illustrating as he went along, many of the standard English poets and essayists. She listened, received, and grew en rapport with him.

Under these favorable auspices their first child was born. She was the child of the father, and wore his features, toned to greater delicacy of outline and purer colors. Her mind as she grew to womanhood was of a quite superior order, but wanted the breadth and generosity which more warmth in the father, and greater ripeness in the mother, would have secured to her.

This infant once in the mother’s arms there could be no further leisure for literary or poetic culture. And as it was not possible for intellectual habits to be formed in the short space of twelve months, the young girl naturally slid back to her former plane of life. This was the more inevitable as their pecuniary circumstances made it necessary for Mrs. Z. to take sole charge of her little one.

Two years from this time another child was born to them—a girl also; but in whom Mrs. Z.’s mental calibre was represented, while her fine physical traits were omitted.

With the more all-engrossing cares of the young[51] wife, the daily life of herself and husband grew insensibly apart. And now a new personage appeared on the scene—a lady of a brilliant, comprehensive, and highly cultivated mind, to which was added a keen and comprehensive interest in the most important reform movement of the day, for which Mr. Z. had signally failed to enlist his wife’s sympathy.

Now it was but natural that Mrs. Z., observing the eagerness with which her husband became engrossed in conversation with his guest, argument following argument, constant reference made at breakfast, dinner, supper to events and personages of which she was wholly ignorant, should grow uncomfortable, depressed, jealous. The talented lady was oblivious to the impression she was making, but she had too noble a nature to willingly make trouble between man and wife.

The new year came, and the fascinating guest departed. The husband, reviewing the past months, charged himself with gross neglect of his wife, and sought, by the most delicate and considerate attention, to atone for his neglect. Mrs. Z. was now nearing her twentieth year, and was enciente with her third child. She was overjoyed to have her husband all to herself again, and expressed that satisfaction in responding passionately to the almost nightly embrace. In due time a son was born—a handsome animal he proved to be. “What a pity that excellent people like the Z.’s[52] should be cursed with so vile a son!” was the common remark when the young man’s reputation as a libertine had become fully established.

ILL EFFECTS OF MORAL COWARDICE.

The common, ideal woman is a weak, disingenuous, cowardly creature. She has no earnest convictions, no purpose, no sincerities within her. Happily, this worthless ideal is breaking up, or is treasured only by weak-kneed clerks in city stores, and lads still in their teens. Rosa Hosmer had a dozen of this kind calling on her. Their self-love was gratified by the slight contrast between their weak-mindedness and hers. The vanity of an obtuse, illiterate man is piqued by the superiority of a woman, while a large-natured, chivalrous man feels honored in her regard. “How weak-minded must a woman be to meet with your approbation!” said a lady in a stage coach of some fellow-passengers who were inveighing against strong-minded women. They looked at one another perplexed, and slightly ashamed of the absurdity of their position, and one of the number who recovered his senses before the others, replied: “I believe you’ve got the best of us, ma’am. I guess none of us would want a particularly silly wife.”

I met once, in New York, a young man of very remarkable acquirements, with great decision of character[53] and large self-esteem. “If I ever marry,” he remarked, “my wife will always have to yield implicit obedience to my commands, or there will be open warfare in the house.”

“Your children will be a stalwart set, then,” I replied, “with their mother a mere mush of concession.”

He did not see what she had to do with it. The children would be his children, and being his, would do him credit. He was not wanting in clear reasoning powers, and having great family pride—pride of race, I should say—after considerable argument, was honest enough to admit that there must be truth on my side.

UNIMPRESSIBILITY.

There are some cold, narrow, positive women so impervious to the influence of others, so insensitive that the husband, if he is superior, can hardly ever represent himself in his children.

I am acquainted with a gentleman conspicuous among his fellows for grace of soul and nobility of nature. He has the tenderness of a woman combined with masculine heroism. Of his six children not one equals the father. The mother, self-willed and external in character (though, of course, violently opposed to woman’s rights and strong-minded women), had children much alike, and all like herself. A very faulty, but sympathetic woman, has often finer children than those frigidly[54] virtuous mothers who are never stirred to the depths by any event or consideration.

An artist of no mean powers took to wife a gentle, characterless girl. He did not wish his wife to be intellectual, and decidedly she was not. They had children “fast,” and it was not long before her amiability changed to fretfulness. She flung all her cares on her husband, had a doctor in the house continually, and at thirty was a faded, complaining, old woman. At thirty-four her seventh child was laid in her arms. The father, despairing of the others, stuck a paint brush in the tiny fist of the latest born, and vowed he should be a painter. In vain,—this son, it is true, dabbled in paints, but had no more genius than the others, notwithstanding that he was a seventh child.

ASKING FOR MONEY.

Mrs. Myrtle was a lovely young woman, lovely in mind and body, but for one defect—viz., a want of firmness and self-esteem. She was surrounded by all the comforts and elegancies that wealth could procure, and was yet the abject slave of a gentlemanly tyrant. She could not receive or pay visits, go shopping, or to a matinée without first obtaining permission from her master. And she was always giving an account of herself in a pacificatory manner. When she suffered humiliation, she blamed her husband, and not the standard[55] she had given him. Mrs. M. had three boys, and they were the most inveterate liars. How could it be otherwise, when their mother spent half her time in eluding inspection, and half in making confession, while she regularly searched Mr. M.’s pockets for coins that could be spent without explaining “what for.”

I could draw another picture where the husband, as soon as his means permitted, placed money in the bank in his wife’s name, that she might feel the interest was more really hers to spend as she pleased without any sense of obligation.

REPRESSED EXTERNAL ACTIVITIES.

A very remarkably superior woman, but without quick, external perceptive faculties to give her insight into character, mistook a handsome, unprincipled brute for a man and gentleman. What she endured for six months after her marriage could not be written. When she found herself enciente, for the sake of the child she sought refuge with an humble friend at a distance from her unhappy home. Being pinched for means, she earned money by her needle, endeavoring, at the same time, to banish from her memory the recollection of her late cruel experience.

Day after day this regal woman sat sewing with Elizabeth Browning’s poems open on a chair beside her[56] committing to memory the most interior of those religious strains as she stitched, stitched in the solitude of the low-roofed cottage by the river. No exhilarating rides on horseback, such as had been her wont, no genial, social company, no brisk walks and happy communion with nature, were possible in her peculiar circumstances. She must forego the healthy, harmonious, external life of her past, and live solely within the inmost chambers of her soul.

At two years old the little girl born of these untoward conditions was lovely, large-eyed, thoughtful, considerate, and tender in her ways as any lady. “Where are your wings, Mary?” said a gentleman who noticed the radiant face at the mother’s garden gate. For these seemed only necessary to prove her a seraph.

Alas! to her mother’s infinite sorrow, she very soon departed to more blissful realms. The constantly repressed emotions of her mother, and her sedentary life, had caused an imperfect action of the lungs, and a low vital tone generally. Grief shortens the breathing as joy expands the lungs. Little Mary was extremely narrow-chested, with sloping shoulders, and hence quite unable to supply sufficient sustenance for so very large a brain, whose weight she bent under, and died, shortly after completing her second year, of acute hydrocephalus.

[57]

BEAUTY.

Beauty of form and feature should not be, as it is now, exceptional. It should be the rule. And there will come a time when parents will be held as much responsible for an ill-favored, ungainly child, as they are beginning to be for their dishonest or vicious children.

The English nobility are celebrated the world over for personal beauty and elegant manners. What cause or causes lie back of this significant fact?

So far as manners are concerned, we know that they are the result of generations of culture, confirmed by generations of use. They suppose leisure and good manners for company, as Emerson has suggested. The bustle and hurry of the work-a-day-world afford no room for polished manners, and only when co-operation shall have taken the place of our present wasteful and cruel competition, shall we have time for graceful living. Hard labor and worry will in time wear out the most charming and inbred politeness.

With regard to the personal beauty of the class alluded to, let us turn to its past—the past of this hereditary nobility. The blood which held courage, self-respect, and the ability to control others, deserved in a sense the deference and admiration it commanded. Then, as these qualities, in themselves and their retroactive effects, favored the production of the more masculine[58] and striking forms of beauty, that type was repeated through successive generations until in the later times it has been modified by the increasing deference to human rights, and refined by intellectual and moral culture. The hereditary transmission of superior personal traits was the more certain because the wife of the lord was a lady, and the wife of the duke a duchess, and as lady and duchess, they believed that the very marrow in their bones excelled in worth that of every man and woman ranking below them in the social scale. And this saved them from the belittling consciousness so debasing to their children, that, as women, they were inferior to men.

We have learned in these days that blood runs out as well as in (on the very principle I am seeking to prove), and the nobleman and woman of genius appear quite as often outside the charmed circle of hereditary distinction as within it. Still, the law is inflexible, and never evaded. Beauty is not born of cowardice, subserviency, or grief. The more culture, the more the blood is worked over, the finer the types, provided we grow more related to humanity, and less to a class.

Pure, unselfish love is in very fact the mother of beauty, as happiness is the mother of song. And what can awaken gladness in a wife so certainly as the ever-watchful kindness of her husband?

[59]

DAISY B——.

I was at one time intimate with a couple who were noticeably plain and angular in appearance. He, from ill-health, had an irritable disposition. She was easily excited. But they were truly mated, and whatever of these peculiarities appeared in society, they disappeared before the door-step of the home was reached. A perfect confidence existed between them, and the unvarying respect and courtesy shown by the husband toward his wife did honor to them both.

It was a late marriage, and one daughter alone came to bless them. A child lovely from her birth, bearing scarce any resemblance to either parent. A delicate, oval face, creamy complexion, soft, intelligent black eyes, a sweet mouth, and a shower of golden curls; not an angle about her, simply a beauty from babyhood to womanhood.

“You think it unaccountable,” said the father to me, “that my wife and I, who are both so plain, should have so pretty a child as Daisy. But I have studied it out, and I settle it this way. My great-grandmother was a famous beauty and a noted belle in her day, and it is her features that have cropped out in Daisy.”

“And let me tell you,” I answered, with equally impressive gesture of the forefinger. “Let me tell you that both of your great-grandmothers might have been[60] as handsome as the Venus de Medici and the Venus of Milo in one, but if you had not bestowed the most chivalrous attention on your excellent wife while she was bearing Daisy—if you had not made her so thoroughly happy by your loving words and thoughtful care, there would have been no cropping out of beauty in the little daughter. Sweet and lovely thoughts resolve themselves into symmetry of form and face. Mental and physical traits do undoubtedly reappear in the same family after a longer or shorter period, but never without the right conditions for their re-incarnation. You may take at least half the credit of Daisy’s good looks to yourself, and the other half belongs to her good mother.”

There is a common proverb which says that ministers’ children are worse than other people’s. We shall not inquire into the case, but we would suggest that there is no power without freedom, and no deep sentiment without solitude, and the minister’s wife can enjoy neither freedom nor solitude where the parishioners provide the salary; for she is considered the property of the parish—her words and actions are forever criticised. She must conciliate the easily offended, steer clear of church factions, abstain from downrightness of speech. The dangers of her situation are permanently impressed[61] upon her, for is not the bread they eat dependent on unanimity of opinion in the society respecting their worth? If she can think her own thoughts, she certainly must not express them. If she has any doubt concerning any part of the creed, she must force it back and make believe that the strait-jacket is as easy as a knitted shirt.

Children born amid these petty oppressions are not likely to be patterns of perfection. Then they are not allowed to be bad like other children, and to get, by degrees, rid of their inharmony. If they break windows or punch noses, they are considered fearfully depraved, and to reflect on the father. So they learn to consult appearances, and give up the only experience that would make men of them. Too much catechism and formal prayer during their early years must give a disgust for the solemnities, and create a distrust of earnest living and thinking, integrity and sincerity. Just in proportion to the degree of irrationality of the creed, are the chances for damaging the characters of the minister’s children.

The most unproductive use one can put one’s mind and heart to, is hatred of evil, of meanness, falsehood, ugliness in others. It does not even prove that we[62] possess the opposite virtues. Especially if we would convey to our children generosity, ingenuousness, and beauty, let our hearts be filled with admiration of these divine qualities. As I have shown, we reproduce that which most impresses us. If it is ugliness, and we hate it, still we reproduce it, because we have dwelt on it. Do not then, when enciente, permit yourself to analyze or dislike imperfections of either mind or body, for this puts the unborn en rapport with that imperfection.

VALUE OF TEMPORARY EFFORT.

It certainly ought to encourage any mother to know, that no matter what her particular faults may be, she can lessen if not obliterate them in her child, by making a great effort in the right direction for so short a period as nine or even six months.

That she should make herself over entirely would appear a too formidable undertaking, but with such a motive she could aid her child. She may have, for instance, a quick temper, which she will determine to control; or she may lack order, or a good memory; or she may be wanting in quiet self-esteem (though she have inward self-respect). Either of these deficiences may be greatly lessened.

I will here insert a letter which I received some time ago from a young woman who had become greatly interested in the subject before us, and who was remarkably[63] wanting in what the phrenologist calls “concentrativeness,” and also in consecutiveness of thought:

MUSICAL ABILITY.

During the winter which followed the summer of their union the X.’s became members of a coterie, with which dancing was held in high esteem. Mrs. X. was enciente, but showed her condition scarcely at all, and so danced, and afterward played for the dancers at the hebdomadal reunions, up to within a month of her confinement.

She had left school with fair musical powers fairly cultivated, and with a voice sweet, but not powerful. The lover who had praised her singing, when her husband, spoke in thoughtless, disparaging strain of its quality. This so wounded and discouraged her that no inducement could make her open her lips again. But, as I have said, she continued to play on the piano-forte, more or less on each occasion, “dance music” already at her fingers’ ends, and short, easy, gay compositions with which she was familiar before leaving school, and which needed no notes as reminders. At home she read and studied no new music, or music of a higher character. This was partly because her musical taste was uncultivated, and partly because the new draft on her energy was attended by depression, and she felt justified in yielding to her feelings, and dropping all[65] mental and bodily effort. “I will be more studious, more orderly and hospitable after baby is born. But now I shall drop everything—let things slide.”

The boy born of these ante-natal circumstances resembled his father in his coarser mental calibre, while he lacked the ambition and steady purpose which characterized the latter. He, however, took to the keys of the piano as a duck takes to water. When a lad, his fingers grasped the chords and flew swiftly through the scales. This endless series of polkas, schottisches, and cotillions wearied the entire household. He hated classical music, and cared little for vocal melody or harmony.

Two years after the birth of this boy, a younger sister of Mrs. X. made them a visit of some months’ duration, and she insisted that Clara should take part with her in duets, notwithstanding that her unused voice and pregnant state promised little success from the effort. As soon as Mr. X. was quite out of sight on the way to his business (for the old criticism still rankled in her mind, and the mutual performance was kept a secret from him), the two would be at the instrument with Mendelssohn, Wallace, and others before them, making delicious harmony. There is nothing like singing to free the soul, and awaken its heights and depths. Nothing could have been more fortunate for little Clara, who made her entry into the world before her[66] aunt’s departure, than the antecedent occupation of her mother. In time her voice proved to be as sweet and far stronger than her mother’s, and in all her nature she realized the inspiring effect of those hours when persuaded by her sister, her mother had lost sight of herself in the pure emotions and thoughts of those famous masters.

GRIEF.

The cause of grief very seriously affects its character. If it is based on a sense of wrong, as in the case of a husband’s unfaithfulness, then indignation, anger, malice make a part of it, and a pregnant wife, distracted by these emotions, conveys to her child, as we have shown, the violent emotions she herself experienced.

If the bad, the unprincipled conduct of a son from whom we had expected reverence and manliness bows us down, a sense of wrong and shame, a feeling that it might have been avoided, mixes with our grief and embitters it.

But if death, from natural causes, which no woman’s eye could foresee and provide against, strikes down one near and dear to us, we simply mourn, and this grief may open the inner chambers of the soul hitherto closed.

Thus Mrs. W., an external, worldly-minded woman, not wanting in common benevolence or sense of duty,[67] simply without dignity or elevation of character, was married to an energetic, sensible, practical man, the manager and owner of a large foundry. Their circumstances were, therefore, quite easy. An inferior kind of social life occupied much of Mrs. W.’s time, and amid these conditions their first child, a girl, was born. This child, on the principle that inferior fruit ripens early, was as mature as she would ever be at sixteen. At twenty she was shallow, pretentious, illiterate, which last her mother was not.

When five months pregnant with her second child, the news was suddenly brought to Mrs. W. that her husband, whom business had called several hundred miles from his home, had been stricken down with yellow fever, and, among total strangers, had passed away, in his delirium calling wildly on his wife for help. The loss made a more profound impression on Mrs. W. than it would have done had she not been pregnant. She had accepted Mr. W. from sentiments of gratitude, and now she was moved to make a strict self-examination as to her imperfect appreciation of his love and kindness. Worldly motives and thoughts were silenced. Conscience and finer judgment were active.

The second child, modified by these four grave, earnest months, was made up of sincerity, earnest thought, and unfailing benevolence. Her early disregard for appearances, as compared to realities, made a wide gulf[68] that could never be bridged between the two sisters. There was absolutely no relationship between them. Marian’s plain, honest, eager, affectionate face was grand beside the empty, pretty one of her elder sister. The younger was slow in developing her whole nature, which was transcendent in its interior moral characteristics. The blow came too late to seriously injure the physical. There was just the unavoidably less degree of robustness between herself and sister, which, with the absence of hope and common gayety, favored gravity in the former.

THE BLACK SHEEP.

The black sheep of a family is to be pitied rather than hated. He is the wronged, as well as the wrong-doer. Many years ago such an one came frequently under my observation. The family consisted of five boys and three girls, all but the one in question remarkably good-looking, gentle-hearted, fairly intelligent, thoroughly temperate, and honest. The third, in order, of the boys, was a coarse, brutal, unprincipled fellow, the dread and despair of his timid mother, whose money, and even clothing, he would steal (the latter to pawn), and whose life he would constantly threaten when a mere lad. He was at home only in a groggery, and that not so much on account of a love of liquor, as from his need of companions on his own plane. He was more than once in prison; oftener[69] escaped through the prayers and management of his mother. Who, now, was responsible for this dangerous member of society?

The father was an amiable, inefficient, illiterate, temperate man; a waster of other people’s time; an interminable talker of nothings. The mother, an amiable, industrious, capable woman, who patched and knitted and made a few dollars by nursing, at the call of the village doctor—a most tender and devoted mother, a too generous neighbor. Passing the unfinished habitation one day, I stopped to admire the double hollyhocks and breathe the perfume from the beds of herbs. At the same moment I heard a loud cry for help, and the old lady came hurriedly round the corner of the house, followed by her son, with a hoe in his hand upraised to strike her. Seeing me, he flung the hoe aside and walked sullenly out of the gate. Sitting on the doorstep wiping her tears away with the corner of her apron, the unhappy woman apologized for her evil son in this wise:

“We were always poor, living from hand to mouth. My husband never had any faculty for making a living. I strove and strove to keep my children from want, and keep them looking decent. There were now six of them, and I was nearly distracted when I found I was going to have another. At this point, late in the fall, my husband went off and stayed four months with a[70] well-to-do uncle of his, leaving me and the six children without food or fire-wood. I had endured all patiently till then, but this made me full of bitterness and anger. I was just raving—quite beside myself all the time. A neighbor helped me, and trusted me a little, so that we kept from starving; but this did not prevent me from feeling indignation, almost hatred, toward a father who could be so unfatherly. Thomas showed the same disposition from a child.”

Here is a counterpart to the preceding narrative.

We had gone to visit an invalid friend who himself had climbed these mountain heights to escape the fogs below on the sea-shore. Here, cosily sheltered by the summit, surrounded by peach and cherry-trees, and looking down on wooded heights and gorges, we found a most excellent hotel. The host, a mild, intelligent man, was himself quite delicate; his wife, on the contrary, was one of those rarely met with, magnetic, generous-natured women, whose coming affects one like the ocean breezes. She had, so she told us, nine children living and one dead. Only such a brave, bounteous creature could have been equal to this, and never in one instance bring reproach on her motherhood. It is of the tenth I would speak, now a lad of sixteen, observing whom the invalid remarked: “I shall get[71] well just looking at that boy. What a manly, affectionate fellow!”

“I call him my consolation,” said his mother. “He can do anything, and he does it so easily, so quietly.” And, indeed, the way in which this refined lad handed you your plate, your glass of milk, or cup of coffee, gave a dignity to the meal, while conferring honor on all parties concerned. The phrase “menial labor” had no significance when he was basting the meat or ironing the “belated” table-cloths for his mother.

Usually, when a woman in very straitened circumstances has an extremely large family, she presently becomes oppressed and discouraged. Her ambition is foiled. She can neither clothe, educate, nor train the children properly, and the latest comers are apt to have a poorer make-up—a fag-end sort of air. Here, on the contrary, was the flower of the flock, a youth full of faculty, at home on the piano-forte stool as at the knife-board, determined to sustain his mother at all hazards.

I sought eagerly the explanation of this phenomenon, and the happy mother in full, varied, and affectionate tones, gladly replied to my inquiries.

“When I found myself pregnant with my tenth child, the nine were living and all at home. My husband’s salary—he was a preacher—was between three[72] and four hundred dollars a year. Fortunately, we owned the little place on which we lived, and yet, if you will recall those Eastern winters, you will realize the great difficulty I had in keeping us all clothed as well as fed. It seemed to me not a virtue, but a sin, to bring more children into the world, and I made up my mind that this should be the very last. I would take matters into my own hands.

“But the thing now to be thought of was a little clothing for the expected baby. I had not a rag to make over, not a dollar for the purpose.

“At this juncture a gentleman, an agent for some religious publication house, called, and as the custom was, I asked him to spend the day, which he did, and I had considerable talk with him. He left, and returned while I was preparing supper, and seemed greatly surprised to find that I had no help. ‘What! nine children to cook and sew for, and no help!’ He had never supposed such a thing possible. I explained that I had a primitive constitution, but still I found myself giving way lately. Whenever I had a trifle ready to pay out, which was very seldom, I employed, it was true, a woman poorer than myself, but less burdened, to do the washing. His astonishment, however, continued.

“A week or two after this visit, I received a letter from a distant city, saying that my case had made a profound impression on him, and that having met with[73] a coterie of ladies belonging to a certain congregation who were anxious to assist some missionary, or help in some other good cause, he had mentioned me and my circumstances, and they were of one mind, eager to help me, and wished to know if I would accept a present in the spirit in which it was offered; and if so, would I indicate what things would be most useful to me.

“I was glad, and willing to accept anything, and in replying mentioned infants’ wear and children’s clothes as most needed.

“In return came a large box with every sort of child’s garments, a roll of flannel, and a complete infant’s wardrobe of the nicest material and most beautifully made—embroidered flannel, dresses prettily tucked and edged—things lovely to look at.

“An immense load was taken off my mind. I was actually filled with delight whenever I thought of these delicate, pretty things, and how comfortable my baby would be. I went about my tasks after this in a spirit of love and thanksgiving. You see Paul! He has been my consolation since his babyhood. No temptation could make him less positively good, less conscientious, or less affectionate than he is.”

As this large-hearted woman related to me these interesting facts, I could not help wishing that the kind ladies who had been instrumental in bringing about so[74] happy a result, as well as the gentleman who had given the impetus to their benevolence, could know how valuable had been the effects.

KLEPTOMANIA.

The word kleptomania is used to indicate the habit of stealing, by those persons with whom wealth precludes the ordinary temptation to the act. Certain women of position are regularly watched by clerks in stores because they are known to carry off laces, ribbons, etc., when they fancy themselves unobserved. Such women have very inferior minds independent of this one vice. In the mother of such an one the desire to get and to keep things of material value, must have been exceedingly prominent. Many an honest mother mourns over the unscrupulous dishonesty of her son, while all unwittingly she conveyed to him the overpowering impulse; or there was not rigid probity enough in her own life to overrule the dishonest tendency conveyed by her husband.

In the first case, her desire to get and to keep would be harmless and justifiable as a temporary state of mind, if she were not pregnant. She knows, although she does not often dwell on the fact, that she is working assiduously for legitimate ends. But as she is, in truth, mainly engrossed in getting and saving, thus using a very limited part of her mind, she does the[75] harm. The selfish, grasping spirit increases on itself through generations of similar experience. On the same principle, the remarkable singer is the product of two or three generations of love of song.

A childish inclination to appropriate that which belongs to another, yields readily to wise treatment, where the intellect, the nature, is not cramped and dull.

SPECULATIVE INTELLECT.

The habit of reasoning independently, of investigating without reference to authority, is by no means a common one. Most people have their thinking done for them, and are content to quote their clergyman, their doctor, or their great-grandmother, as the case may require. We say a man or woman is “original” when they seek Truth wherever she may be found, regardless of popular opinion.

My friend, though quite practical, loved dearly to wander in the higher regions of thought. Such an one is apt to suffer for the want of sympathy, and situated as she was in an obscure inland town, where living literature was unappreciated and congenial companionship did not exist, her first year of married life was not all that she had anticipated. Her husband was “all business,” but he wanted his wife to be happy, and he induced her to send for an old schoolmate “for company.”

[76]

After Miss Wood’s arrival there was no time for morbid regrets or dissatisfaction. She brought a year’s later news of the old circle of friends, was full of piquant personal reminiscence, could discuss the merits of the latest noteworthy literature, and entered heartily into the political reform movements of England and Italy. The days were now only too short for the duties and sympathy that had to be crowded into them.

After the birth of Mrs. Roche’s first child her friend married, and moved on to a farm some miles away. Mrs. R. had more domestic occupation, but a close communication was kept up. Then the anti-slavery agitation was beginning to be felt all over the country, and Mr. R., to his wife’s great delight, flung himself with all his compact executive energy into it. During this period another child, a girl, was born. Suddenly and unexpectedly business losses occurred, which obliged a removal to a new place.

“It so happened,” said Mrs. R., referring long years later to the marked difference in her children, “that the months before Cecil’s birth, I met with no book or person that appealed to me, and I was always so helplessly dependent on outside influences when I was enciente. The dear boy, in his early youth, gave evidence of the absence of the speculative intellect. He hates discussion and theories of every sort. Philosophy is his abomination. The day is good enough for him[77] without analysis. He likes a fine poem, and adores Ruskin, and his order and system make him invaluable to his father. But in comprehensiveness, in capacity for ideas, he ranks far below his brother and his sister.”

INTEMPERANCE.

In the preceding pages I have endeavored to show what manner of living favors the transmission of noble and beautiful qualities from mother to child; what conditions tend to produce unbalanced, vicious, unlovely character. I have dwelt principally on the moral aspects of maternity, because that is the side hitherto overlooked. But I can not close without saying a word respecting the baleful influence of intoxicating drinks.

Nothing is more certain than that the desire for alcoholic drinks is inherited, and all degrees of mental dullness and incapacity, from one grade below the parental endowment, to idiocy, may be distinctly referred to habits of intoxication.

We have seen that the abnormal sensibility of a pregnant woman insures large effects (on the child) from small causes. Thus a joy is absorbed by the young life that the mother outgrows; and depression that was but temporary with her, leaves its mark on the temperament and disposition of her offspring.

Thus the habit of taking just a drop to sustain your[78] fainting spirits during the day, and a glass of something hot at night, added, most likely, to the father’s moderate drinking, gives the child an uncontrollable passion for stimulants. Now, the life you live may be all that is desirable, but if your brain is put under this influence occasionally, all the good is weakened, vitiated, undermined. Alcohol breaks down the WILL, and what is a human being without a will? A vacillating, unreliable creature. It deadens the mental sensibilities and arouses the passions.

Friends will often advise a pregnant woman to drink beer or spirits, assuming that nature at such times requires it. Now, nature is equal to her own emergencies, and pregnancy is not a disease. The brooding mother needs plenty of sunlight and fresh air, abundant sleep, moderate exercise, wholesome food, and congenial surroundings. Let her listen to no one who prescribes a stimulant which holds disease in itself.

There is such a thing as intemperance in eating, and I would counsel any woman to demand of herself a perfect self-control at the table. Nothing less than this, with entire abstinence on her part, will suffice to neutralize in most cases the desire for liquor, communicated, in so many cases, by the father; and the firmness exercised by her in denying the appetite, will give her child the firmness to resist the temptation to drink. Without this will in the matter, the inclination would[79] be communicated and not the power to resist, as, for instance, if she merely abstained because she could not obtain what she longed for.

The Germans sodden their brains with lager-beer; the English brutify themselves on gin and porter. We ruin soul, body, and worldly prospects on adulterated whisky.

Our husbands and fathers license thousands of groggeries, corner groceries, saloons, that they may be free to indulge out of sight of home. In this way they prepare places wherein their sons may be initiated into vice. Thus the crop of drunkards never fails in village, town, or city, nor the supply of criminals, large and small, made criminals by these means provided.

The “deficient” child and the predestined drunkard, are cradled as softly as are the children of temperance. The mother handing her babe round for the admiration of her neighbors, is shaken by no prevision of what it will one day become. Her fair, rosy-cheeked boy destined to be the inmate of an inebriate asylum? She will not believe it. Yet only obedience to the higher law on her part will have saved him from it.

CONCLUSION.

It has been clearly demonstrated in these modern days that nothing is to be had without paying the full price. The more valuable the thing desired, the greater[80] the price to be paid. Thus the satisfactions and joys of parentage can only be had by the study of, and obedience to, natural and spiritual law, at the cost of much effort, self-denial, and self-control. (Self-indulgence and indifference do not produce fine offspring).

It has also been proved, to the simplest observation, that woman has the large balance of power in the formation of character, and it is for her to assume the responsibility. Genius is dependent on a combination of influences outside our control, but good sense, integrity, generosity, and chastity take their growth from thoughts, emotions, and acts, over which we have control to a very great extent. Let women take courage. The larger their responsibility, the nobler their reward.