Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1896-03-14

The story Of Three Generations Of
Haitian sfw...Esw

The Story OF Three Generations Of III
Italian Family.
IIeredity is conspicuous feature IN
tho theory of criminal anthropology
held by the school Of which Lombroso
is the leader, and Loinbroso's Archiv-
10 al Psichiatria contains in recent Is
sue an article illustrating 1t. 1t is a
story by Renieri al Rocchi OF three
generations OF an Italian family
D., whose family since the early
wars of the 10th century had produced
only commonplace men and women,
married u, whose ancestors, i'm
mediate and remote, had been brilliant
men and women, with here and there
a physical faint that often took the
form of ophthalmia and of a degenera-
ton affecting the skin, while Others
had exhibited psycho-ethical anoma.
lies. D. was normal and undistin-
guished, like all his recent ancestors,
and was manifestly the inferior of his
wife. She inherited the brilliancy OF
her race, gathered about her an intel
lectual society, and sometimes wrote
verse. Her letters to D. were clever
and charming. though not marked with
strong evidences of affection. DIS
chief defect as husband was a certain
infirmity of temper, marked by oc-
casional outbursts of anger.
Six children were born to this pair.
One son showed great brilliancy and
fondness for study, so that he prom
ised to make man in the world of
science or of letters, but he was early
overtal1en by blindness through the in
herited faint, and he died at 60, undis-
tinguished. The second was mat,
told" in the language of 1.ombroso
and his school. He was clever, but ut
terly without application. Satiric po-
etry was his passion. lie took to drink
and to play, thus exhibiting his psyche
ethical faint of his mothers family,
and died at 80, from the result of over
indulgence in the course of too rapid
life. The fathers infirmity of temper
took with the child the form of marked
impulsiveness.
The third child, daughter, was dis
tinguished for extreme sensibility and
sweetness of character. She was af-
fectionate, charitable and self-sacri-
ficing. She lost her husband and daugh-
ter, however, within month, and be.
came a mad hypochondriac. thus ex-
hibiting the mental faint of the moth
cr's family. The other two daughters
inherited the fathers normal char
acter and apparently not his infirmity
of temper, as they are dismissed with Il
line. The sixth child, boy. inherited
traits of both parents in a marked de-
gree. He was warmly affectionate, and
his moral sense was highly developed,
but, like the father, he was irascible
and at times driven to exhibitions of
great anger by trifles. He developed
palpitation of the heart toward 80. The
inherited literary bent of the mothers
family took in him the form OF
graphomania. He married an unusual.
ly sweet-hatursd woman, not Of Italian
blood, and died at 40, leaving a son and
daughter of tender years.
Here began the third generation. The
daughter was a girl of rare intellectual
gifts and amazing confidence in her
own Judgment. Premature old age
overlook her at 20. She, too, was d
graphomaniac, and before she was rs
years old she had written many TO
mances, for the most part politico-re-
ligious. She wrote with no wish for
fame, but merely to put into ords her
opinions and conceptions of life. She
refused, indeed, to seek publisher for
her writings. The brother, before
reaching the age of is, had written
many romances, dramas, poems and
sociological studies. He. too, was a
graphomaniac, and he published moth
ing save few occasional poems. or
four others in the third generation, one
was gifted, but he became slrunkard
A second showed no marked anomaly
and third was unintelligen. and abb
Thus, the marriage of D., the scion
of normal and stupid race, with the
brilliant but talented u, gave to the
world a strange succession of brilliant
eccentrics, hypochondriacs, mattoids
and drunkards.-London Standard