Year: 1869




BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.


A great part of the children that are
born nowadays are not good, average
healthy children. They are children
of deficient brain power, of diseased
nervous system, children begOtten of
tobacco smoke, late hours, tight la
cling, and dyspeptic stomaehs. The
father has put his sons brain in his
meerschaum and smoked it out; the
mother has dribbled and dribbled it
away in balls and operas. Two young
people come together, both of them
in n state, of half nervous derange-
ment. She, cannotlive without strong
coffee; her hand trembles, and she is
sinking at her stomach, when she
first rises in the morning, till she has
taken a cup of strong coffee, when she
is primed for the day. He, cannot
study, or read, or perform any real
mental labor, without tobacco. Both
are burning life's candle at both ends;
both are wakeful and nervous, with
weak muscles and vibrating nerves.


Two such person unite in givingeX-
istence to q poor helpless baby, who is
born in state of such diseased ner-
vous sensibility that ali the forces of
nature are torture to it. 1.-THE faith
ers have eaten sour grapes, and the
children's teeth are set on edge. y
What such children cry for is neither
cold or hunger, but irrepessible ner-
vous agony-Sometimes from fear,
sometimes because everything in life
is too strong for them, and jars on
their poor weakened nerves, Just as il
does on those of an invalid in a low
nervous fever.


Now, the directions about putting
child away alone to sleep, without
rocking or soothing, 3 agOOd one only
for robust and healthy children. For
the delicate, nervous kind have spO-
ken OF, it is cruel and it is dangerous.
We know one authentic instance of q
mother who was trained to believe ii
her duty to put her infant to bed in
lonely chamber and leave it. Not da-
ring to trust herself in her ordeal, she
put on her bonnet, and, positively for
bidding her servants to go near the
child, went out for a walk. When
she returned the child was still, and
had been for sometime. She went up
to examine. The child in struggling
violently, had thrown itself over on
its face, and pillow had fallen over
it, ard it was dead from suffoeation.


Nervous children suffer untold ago
nies from fear when put to bed alone.
No tongue can tell the horrors of a
lonely room TO such children. A lit
tie. delicate boy, whom his parents
were drilling to sleep alone, used to
scream violently every night, and his
father would come in and whip him.s
He mistooh the pertinacity for Obsti-
macy, and thought it his duty TO con-
Quer the child's will. One night he
said, why do you scream so when
you know you shall be punished Y'-
80 father, fatherl" said the little fel-
low, 81 don't mind your whipping
me, if you'll only stay with me."-
That fathers eyes were opened from
from that moment. He saw that the
human being cannot be governed by
dead rules, like plant or an animal.


No, mother, before you make up
plan of operation for your baby, look
at it and see what it is, and use your
own common sense as to what 1t
needs.


Look at yourself; look at your hus-
band; look at your own physical hab-
its-at his, and ask what your child is
likely to be.


The caution of our friend with re-
gard to not suffering the child to sleep
betlOeen the parents is important, for
many reasons. There is scarcely
man that does not use tobacco, there
is q constant emanation of it from his
person. Now, however he may just
Iify the use of it himself, he can hard
ly think that stale tobacco eff1uvium
is a healthy agent to be carried into
the lungs of a delicate infant. Chill
dren of smoking fathers often have
their brains and nervous systems en-
tirely impregnated with the poison of
nicotine in the helpless age of infan-
ey. A couple came to q country place
entirely for the health of their only
boy, a feeble infant. The child was
pale and sickly, eonstipated in bowels,
and threw up his milk constantly
The parents had one room, in which
they lived with him, and which was
every evening blue with tobacco
smoke. Every evening that helpless
little creature took into his lungs as
much tobacco as if he had smoked a
cigarette. Still more than this-the !





mother who was nursing that infant |
did what was equivalent to smoking
one cigar every evening, she breathed
her husbands smoke. Now, if your
baby smokes cigars, you will find, by
and by, when he comes to need brains
that this brain power will not be found.
He will be starty, fretful, morbid full
of nervous kinks and cranks, one of
those wretched human being who
live life like that described by Haw-
thorne in his story of "Feathertop,"
only capable of existence and efficien-
CIV while he is smoking, but sinking
into dimness and stupidity when he
stops.


Such are some of the chances of
poor babies! God help the poor little
thingsI They never asked to be born;
and their parents, if they tCiH bring
them into existence, owe them every
attention to make that existence a
blessing. .