Year: 1874




seen in the Coleridges, father and son
The father was an opium-eater, and tell.
us himself that his will was utterly pow
erless His son inherited the same
weakness When young his brother
wrote of him: "a certain intirmity o
will had always shown itself. His sensi
bility was intense, and he had not where
with to control it He could not open 6
letter without trembling. He shrank
from mental pain. He yielded as il
were unconsciously to slight temptations
as if swayed by mechanical impulse
apart from his own volition." He writes
of himself in one of his books:


Oh woful impotence of weak resolves!
Recorded rashy to the writer's shame.
Days pass away, and times large orb revolves
And every day behoIds me still the same,
Till oft neglected purpose loses aim,
And hope becomes fiat, unheeded lie.


The facts of physiological science, as
nation, have been summed up as follows:


Every formation of body internal or
external; every deformity or deficiency,
from disease or accident; every habit and
every aptitude-All these are liable to be,
Ut may Ue, tfdilSIulGIeu 10 Tile OLSpFlHS.


intellectual endowments and apti-
tudes are liable to transmission; and ac-
cording to the mental cultivation or neg
lect of the parents will be Gas general
rule) the capacity and facility of learn
ing of the children.


"All moral qualities are transmitted
from parent to child, with this important
addition, that in the case of vicious ten
denotes or habits the simple practice OF
the parent becomes the passion, the
mania, the all but irresistible impulse of
the child.


Even when the very identical vice is
/ not inherited, a morbid organization is
the result, which shows itself in some
allied morbid tendency or some serious
physical lesion"


beg pardon for this array of facts,
but could not well press upon your at
tention what l wished to say without
then. 1t has been established beyond
all controversy, that not only the fea-
lures and general physical peculiarities
of parents. but their insanity, their i'm
becility, their quickness of apprehension,
| their love of knowledge and scientific
pursuits, their moral degradation, their
j
ers they possess, reappear again in their
children. If you wish to see yourself,
look at your child, and behold your
physical, mental and moral image What
a fearful slaughter of the innocents is
going on all about US. Little children
sent into this life without their consent,
and burdened with disabilities resulting
from parents crimes! What efforts,
what fearful struggles to release them
selves from the burden. Sometimes the
frequently the victim is dragged through
years of anguish and vexation to an un-
timely end. You and l carry in our
complex natures the virtues and vices of
our parents. God has so linked us to-
gether that the iniquities of the father
(as we'll as his virtues) are visited upon
his children unto the third and fourth
generation. 1t is not the fault of the law
that those children are so wronged; it is
because we have nothing but evil to trans
NIT to them.


For the sake of innocent children, who
will be crippled all through life, on ac-
count of our wrong-doing, we ought to
have nothing transmit to them but good.
| Not many months since the whole coun-
try was stirred because clergyman had
SO severely whipped his child in order to
compel him to say his prayers, that the
child died from the prostration. Bad as
it was, what was this to the thousands
of children who are today carrying dead
bodies from which they cannot be deliv-
cred; tendencies to crime and disease
that hold them in adamantine chains. If
this parent was guilty, of how much
more condemnation are those worthy
who are not only in a single instance de-
frauding their child but who so cripple
him in his whole life race that he can
look forward to nothing but failure and
| disaster


But few weeks ago, and our newspa-
pers were filed with a record of blood
children were missing; a boy and girl
carried away or murdered. A compan-
ion of twelve years was arrested and ex-
amined. He confessed the deed, and in
the cellar of his fathers house showed
where the bodies had been deposited.
When examined he had no adequate con-
conception of the fearful crime he had
committed. He simply drew the knife
across the child's throat; could not well
help it. Further examination showed
that the father was a butcher by profes-
sion. The mother often aided him in
his labors, and at times would herself
plunge the knife into the heart of the
animal, and feast her eyes upon the
blood. Is it any wonder that a child
born of such natures, and reared amid
such circumstances, should have such a
thirst for blood, that ere he had reached
his teens he should be called the youth
full murderer


With all my nature 1 want to protest
against such entailment of crime upon
little children. Every feeling of human
ity revolts against it. There is but one
way to avoid it and that is to have no
such nature yourself If you are accus
toned to linger long over your wine glass
no matter whether you have been seen
to reel through the streets or not; if your
whole body has become so saturated with
the filth of tobacco that it oozes out ot
every pore, and so impregnate the atmos
phere, that clean pair of nostrils will
detect you mile in the distance; if you
have no love for good pure literature but