Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-05-25

" HE ultimate expression of hui
man vanity and egotism is
4 the desire parents have to
make their children replicas
of themselves in body, mind and
soul.
It'd bit Of fiattery to any father and
mother, all that you have to do is
to tell them that their little Johnny
and Mary are heir living images.
They simply gulp it down and ask
for more.
Father will puff out his chest, and
beam with joy as he opines that he
guesses that Johnny is a chip off
of the old block, and mother will
bride and smile and say that Mary
certainly does look like her baby
pictures.
Yet father may be bald-headed, and
knock-kneed, and ay-windowed and
homely enough to stop the clock, and
mother one of the sandy-haired,
freckled-faced, pug-nosed, slab-sided
ladies who are hard on the eyes, and
constitutlonally unified for the Vamp
business.
You would think they would sue
of character who would accuse their
helpless son and innocent little
daughter of even remotely resem-
bling them, and that the least that
the slanderer of defenseless infants
would get off with would be assault
and battery.
But nothing of the kind happens.
Instead of the ugly and malformed
hoping and praying their children
will look like anybody else on earth
but themselves, they. are tickled to
death to have Johnny inherit their
protruding teeth, and for Mary to
have wished on her invisible eye.
brows, and a sal eratus biscuit COM
pleXion.
Parental self-conceit even goes a
step farther, and gloats over chill
dren reproducing their very faults
a father boast that he can't control
Johnny because Johnny takes after
him in being determined to have his
own way at any cost! Or mother will
say with pride that Mary has a
quick temper just like she has!
If the children copy their parents
is only when they strike out on
original sin lines that father and
mother bring them to book.
1t is to parental vanity that we
owe the perpetuation of hideous
Christian names, generation after
generation. If father had parents
who were cruel enough to saddle him
Will SOHlo name LndL makes MIN
shudder every time he hears the
doesn't say this outrage shall go no
farther. I'll stop it right here. No.
He brands his oldest son with it,
and never forgives his daughter-in-
law if she refuses to continue the
curse on her first born.
How any man Or woman could af-
f1ict a poor little, helpless infant with
their own harsh, hard, ugly, unmelo-
dious name just to crafty their van
ity is something that passes compre-
hension.
They do it, however, and no prob
lem is more difficult for a humane
young couple to settle than how to
protect their offspring from being
christened Heprebiah, or Maria, or
Ephriam, or Jeremiah without mortal
ly offending the grandpa and grand
ma whose egotism demands that the
baby be sacrificed on the altar of
their vanity.
1t is parental self-conceit that is
responsible for nine-tenths of. the
friction between fathers and moth
ers and children. Parents are de-
terrnined that their children shall
have the same outlook on life, the
same tastes and desires and ambi-
lions that they have Unfortunately,
nature doesn't always run a family
in the same mould, and it not infre-
quently happens that instead of be-
ing little understudies of their papas
and mamas, Johnny and Mary are
cast for exactly opposite roles.