The Wilmington daily Republican. (Wilmington, Del.) 1890-1902, 1898-10-10
GOOD HANDED DOWN.
OR. TALMAaE breaches ON iNFLu-
eNcE OF HeREDITY.

20 Her Childfen-A Mothers Great h,
sponsibility.
copyright. 1898. by American Press Ass,
| clation.l
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9.-The augments
ton Of parental influence as the centurie
go by DR.. Talmage here Gets forth Will
discoursing about one Of the grandmott
ers Of Bible times The text Is II Timoth
!, s, "The unfoigned faith that is In thee
which dwelt first In thy grandmothe
Lois"
| In this pastoral letter which Paul, tn
old minister, Is writing to Timothy, tn
young minister, tho family record 4
brought out Paul practically says
Timothy, what q good grandmother 70,
hadi You ought to be better than mos
folks, because not only was your mother
good. but your grandmother was good
also. Two preceding generations of piety
ought to give you mighty push In tht
| right direction" Tho fact was that limo.
thy needed encouragement He was In
poor health, having weak stomach, and
was dyspeptio, and Paul prescribed fol-
him tonic, "a little wine for thy stom.
ach's sake'-not much wine, but little
wine, and only as medicine. And II the
wine then had been as much adulterated
with logwood and strychnine as our mod
ern wines he would not have prescribed
any.
But Timothy, not strong physically, is
encouraged spiritually by tho recital Of
grandmotherly excellence, Paul limiting to
him, as hint this to you, that God some
times gathers up as In q reservoir, away
back Of the active generations of today, o
cody influence and then, in response to
prayer, let's down the power upon children
and grandchildren and great grandchil-
dren. The world Is woefully in want of a
table Of statistics In regard to what IL the
protractedness and immsndty of influence
Of one good woman In the church and
world. We have accounts Of how much
evil has been wrought by a woman who
lived nearly hundred years ago, and Of
how many criminals her descendants fur
nished for the penitentiary and the gal
lows, and hSw many hundreds Of thou
sands OF dollars they cost our country In
their arraignment and prison support, as
we'll as In the property they burglarized
and destroyed, but will not some ono come
out with brain comprehensive enough
and heart warm enough and pen keen
enough to give us the facts In regard to
some good woman of a hundred years ago
and let us know how many Christian men
and women and reformers and useful peo-
plo have been found among her descend
ants. and how many asylums and colleges
and churches they built, and how many
millions Of dollars they contributed for
humanitarian and Christian purposesp
Good Wnmen's Influence.
The good women whose tombstones
wero planted In the eighteenth century are
moro alive for good In the nineteenth CEN
fury than they were BEFORE rs the good
women Of this nineteenth century will be
moro alive for good In the twentieth CEN
fury than now. Mark you, I have no idea
that tho grandmothers were any better
than their granddaughtors. You cannot
get very old people to talk much about
how things were when they We're boys and
girls. They have reticenoe and nom
which make mo think they
feel themselves to 10 the custodians of the
reputation Of their early comrades. While
our dear old folks arc rehearsing tho follies
Of the present, IL we put them on the wit
ness stand and cross examine them as to
how things were 10 years ago tho silence
becomes oppressive
The celebrated Frenchman, Volney, WIS.,
ted this country In 1906, and he says Of
dict In those times, "H a pro-
mum was offered for q regimen most de.
'tructive to health, none could be devised
more cfflcacious for these ends than that
n use among these people," That eclipses
'ur lobster salad at midnight. Everybody
alks about the dissipation Of modern So
iety and how womanly health goes
lown under it, but it was worse 100 years
go, for the chaplain of French regi-
mont in our Revolutionary war wrote in
1888 In his Book Of American Women"
aging: "They are tall and we'll proper
loned; their features arc generally rcgu-
ar; their compilations arc generally fair
nd without color. At 20 years of age the
,omen have no longer the freshness of
outh. At 30 or 40 they are decrepit." In
sl2 foreign consul wrote book en-
tied "A Sketch Of the United States at
le Commencement Of the Present Cen
lry," and no says of tho women of those
mes, "At the age Of 80 all their charms
avo disappeared. One glance at tho
ortraits of the women 100 years ago, and
leir style Of dress makes us wonder how
ley ever got their breath. All this makes
% think that the express rail train Is no
ore an Improvement on tho old canal
'at or the telegraph no moro an i'm
'ovement on tho old time saddlebags
AN tho women Of our day arc On I'm
ovement on the women of the last GEN.
ny.
A Glorious Race.
But still, notwithstanding that those
mes were so much worse than ours, there
as a glorious race of godly women 10
ID 100 years ago who held the world
OK from sin and lifted 1t toward virtue,
d without their exalted and sanctitied
fuence before this tho last good influ-
CO would have persisted from the earth.
deed all over this land there are seated
1ay-not so much in churches, for many
them arc too feeble to come-a great
my aged grandmothers. They some
mes feel that tho world has gone past .
sm, and they have an idea that they arc :
little account Their head sometimes
Is aching from the racket Of the grand ,
ldren down stairs or In the next room. =
ey steady themselves by tho banisters =
they 60 up and down. When they get q
old, 1t hangs on them longer than 1t a
ID to- They cannot bear to have the r
Indchildren punished, even when they q
erve 1t, and haze go relaxed their ideas :,
family discipline that they would spoil I,
the youngsters Of the household by too =,
at leniency. a
these old folks are tho resort when i
at troubles come, and there Ia CAIN n,
and soothing power In the touch of an IN
d hand that Is almost supernatural. n,
" feel they are almost through with n
journey Of life and read the old book ~ u
re- than they used to, hardly knowing w
ch most they enjoy, the Old Testament o.,
he New, and often stop and dwell tear "
y over the family record half way be- ar
en-. We hail them today, whether in M
house Of God or at the homestead ar
ssed Is that household that has in 1t at,
ndmother Lois. Where she Is angels nv
lowering round and God is In the 81,
n. May her last days be like those a,
by autunnal days that We call Indian WI
liner. IN
J 1t not time that you and do two ret
'gs-swing open a picture gallery Of WI
wrinkled faces and stopped shoulders mi
he past and call down from their heay- wa
; thrones tho godly grandmothers, to mi
them our thanks, and then to per. SUI
49, Il