The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-08-23
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
World's Highest Paid Woman wrstsr.
Your ChiIdren's Inhcritance-2.

Your ChiIdren's Inhcritance--2.
You will leave good name or a
! bad name to your children. Which
will it be?
VIII you leave your children
| truth and honor? Will you have
taught them by precept and example
to speak the truth. and to play the
game of life fairly and squarely. or
| will you have taught them to be liars
and cheats? If your children have
seen you do underhanded things. if
they have heard you tell falsehoods,
if they have seen you give false
weights and measures. and take adj
vantage of the ignorance ofsothers; if
all your stories of cleverness reveal
| you as robbing some one less sophisti-
Gated than yourself. then you have
| given your children an inheritance of
dishonesty.
But if you have taught them to
speak the truth and dspise lie. if
you have held up Before their young
eyes a shining ideal of stainless honor
| if you have made them feel that it
sin't sporting not to give the other
fellow an equal chance, land that to
soil ones hands by taking what does
not belong to one. is to reach the low
est depths of degradation, then one
| has given ones children an inheritance
! of honesty and honor.
I Which are you leaving yours?
Are you leaving your children an
inheritance of courage and grit? Arr
you making them successes or failures
/ in life? Are you teaching them to e
winners and cutters, or to be the sort
of heroes that go over the top and
fight adverse circumstances to a
| standstill2
If you are plying your children be-
cause they are poor and have to work,
you are making of them weaklings.
If you weep over them every time
, they have anything hard to do, you
make them so soft they succumb to
the first misfortune. If you talk to
them all the time about the difficulties
that lie in their way. you kill hope,
! and with that energy and initiative
| You give them an inheritance of fear
crd cowardice that foredooms them
to failure.
But if you hold your children to the
hard Jobs that come their way, you
strengthen their mental and moral
fibre, and make them fit to fight
every difficulty which they meet
I'M life. If you cheer them on with
brave and hopeful words when they
faNer, you put that in their souls that
sends them on to victory. If you buck
them UP when they are discouraged
and force them out to try again, you
put the iron into them that turns
them into successful men and women.
Which inheritance are you giving
your children. courage or cowardioe
The will to. do. or the flabbiness of
4 Are you s'giying your children a
mind and heart or just a body
and pocketbook? Are you teach
ing them to have some resources with
in themselves. or Just to be creatures
of the senses?
Are you teaching yours children to
read intelligently, - find pleasure in
good literature and good music to en-
joy pictures. to revel in the beauties of
nature, and enjoy good plays. or are
you teaching them that the joy of life
is made up of food and drink, and cab
arets and diamonds?
There are plenty of homes in which
there are no books, in which nobody
ever reads anything but the headlines
of the papers and trashy magazines;
where the only talk is of money and
what money will buy, and the family
ideal of a happy evening is a six reel
thriller at the movies, or a 1urid meIo-
drama at the theater.
Are you teaching your boys that a
man must find his happiness in cham
payne and taxis, in gambling and
chorus girls and everything that takes
him away from home? Are you teach
ing your girls that the chief end of
woman is to dress finer than any other
woman in her set, and to go from
bridge party to bridge party, and tea
taurant to cabaret
If you are, you are giving them the
inheritance that sends men and women
to the divorce court, that shuts the
door of a happy home forever in their
face, and that dooms them to mis-
cradle existence as soon as they have
grown too old to be attractive to the
opposite sex, and when excitement
pals upon them. and they can find
, no new thrills in amusements that
they have worn to the bone.
Are you leaving your children an In
heritance of the memory of loving
parents and a happy, peaceful home
Or will they carry thru life the recol-
lection of grouchy father and a
peevish and neurotic mother, and a
home that was a perpetual battle
ground?
Think It over. What are you leav-
ing your. children? Will you leave
them rich in heart and mind, or spirit
ually bankrupt?