“O Mother, I am so glad you are at home again. I had a lovely talk with father last evening, but it wasn’t you. He gave me lots to think about, though. He said that mothers need to have such a broad education; that they should even be chemists, mother, think of that!”

“Does that seem such a strange idea to you? Really they need to be much more than that. They should be good teachers, to instruct their children, wise judges, in order to know what justice is, doctors of medicine so as to understand the first symptoms of illness and how to treat it, and surgeons so as to know how to bind up wounds, treat cuts and bruises and even how to reduce a dislocated finger if necessary. They should be physiologists so as to understand the laws of bodily health, and psychologists so as to know and obey the laws of the mental development of their children.”

“O, mother! How can one girl learn all those hard things?”

Mrs. Wayne smiled indulgently as she replied, “O, she won’t have to learn all of them at once. Taken one at a time, through all the years preceding her marriage, she will find she can learn something of each without taxing herself too severely. For example, you can learn now how to take care of your own health, and that will help you to care for the health of your children when they come. You have already studied First Aid to the injured in your physiology class. When you go to College you will study psychology as a part of your course of study.”

“What does that big word mean, mother?”

“Psychology means the science of mind. I said that mothers need to be psychologists; that is, students of the science of mind, so that they will understand the indications of the development of mind in their babies. A child gets the largest part of its education before it is six years old.”

“O, mamma, do you really mean that?”

“I certainly do. In the first place, it has to learn, one by one, and by repeated experiments, its body. You do not realize now that you had to learn, one by one, and by repeated experiments, every one of the muscular movements that you can now make without thinking of them. You remember what hard work it was to learn the piano and that was only learning to use a very few muscles in a certain way. As a baby you had to practice hours a day before you could learn to hold anything in your fingers. Your little hands flew about very wildly at first, but by constant practice you gained skill at last.”

“Why, mamma, I never thought that a baby was practicing when it was throwing its hands about.”

“But it is practicing, and it keeps it up hour after hour, day after day, until it has learned to hold things, to pull itself up, to sit up, to hold its head up, to creep, to walk, to climb.

“Have you any idea what a wonderful feat has been accomplished when a baby has learned to walk? Physiologists tell us that walking is continually beginning to fall and perpetual recovery from falling. It is a greater thing for the baby than those acrobatic feats which so amazed you the other day.

“Then the mental education begins also at birth. The baby is building his brain by everything he sees and does, and it is the mother’s duty to see that this brain-building goes on in accordance with the law of his nature. Every baby is a new being with a nature of his own, and what was good for his brother may not be good for him. The training that will give one child self-confidence will make a little tyrant of another; what would render one merely amenable to control might make a coward of another. So you see, my dear, that a mother needs to have great knowledge of the laws of mind and great insight in the applying of those laws to the particular cases she has in hand.”

“It really seems, mamma, as if girls ought to study all those things before they marry.”

“Indeed they ought, but I fear they never will until they come to have a clearer idea of the value and importance of the mother’s work. When they realize that the great and lasting work of the world is done in the homes, by the mothers, with their little children, then we shall have men demanding that girls shall be prepared for that important work by previous education.

“There is another way, too, in which women are given great power over the destiny of the world, and that is through heredity.”

“What does that word mean, mother? I have heard it very often, but people speak as if it were something undesirable.”

“Heredity means the passing on of traits or talents from parents to children. Now, your eyes are like papa’s. They are a part of your heredity from him. You have other features like him, and you have many of his traits. It has been easy to teach you to be orderly because you have inherited his love of order. Then, too, you have many of my characteristics. My hair, my love of music, my quick temper.”

Helen looked at her mother somewhat in surprise.

“Do you mean, mamma, that I have a quick temper because you had one?”

“I certainly do; and if I had known, when I was of your age, what I know now, I might have given you a different disposition.”

“Will my children have a temper because I have one?”

“There will be a greater probability of their having quick tempers because you have one.”

“How can I help it, if I got my temper from you and just passed it on to them? Certainly I am not to blame.”

“Many people excuse themselves for their faults in just that way; but that is to give evil greater power than good, and we don’t believe in that, you know. Each one has the power to make himself over, and in the process he may change the direction of the inheritance of his children.”

“You mean that if I overcome my temper, my children will not be so likely to have tempers?”

“Yes, by controlling yourself you will have given them greater power of self-control; that is worth working for, isn’t it? If, when I was of your age, I had begun to govern my temper, I should have been helping you. So it is in every field of effort. If you are a good student and cultivate your mental powers to the best of your ability, you will make it easier for your children to be good students. Now, in your young girlhood, you are working to help future generations.”

“But maybe I’ll never have any children, mamma; what then?”

“None of us can see our future, but if we are wise we will prepare for the probabilities. At your age I could not be sure that I would ever be a mother, and now I have several children to call forth every power that I possess through inheritance or by education. You are not sorry that in many ways I was wise enough so to cultivate myself that you have inherited desirable qualities; and you have cause to regret that I did not know now to do better for you. You can learn through my failures, and be kinder to your children than I have been to you. I can assure you of one thing, even if you never have children, you will never regret having cultivated yourself in every talent and virtue, but you may have great cause for sorrow if you fail to develop the best in yourself. There is no grief in the world like that caused by wilful or wicked sons and daughters. Their waywardness brings not only sorrow but self-condemnation on the parents who must feel that in some way they have been to blame, either in the inheritance they passed on or the training they gave. And there is no happiness equal to the just pride felt in honorable children. As Solomon says: ’Children’s children are the crown of old men, and the glory of children are their fathers.’”

Helen was silent a moment and then asked, “Don’t you think the law of heredity a very cruel law? It doesn’t seem fair that children should be punished for the sins of their parents.”

“God’s laws are never cruel, dear. They are always made for our good, and they will be for our good, if we use them rightly. Harry Severn fell yesterday from a scaffold and broke his leg because of the law of gravitation. You might say that was a cruel law, and that God was unkind to make such a law whereby we can be so seriously injured. But think for one moment what that law means in the universe. If it were not for this mysterious force which we call gravitation, the whole creation would be in chaos. Nothing would stay in place, buildings could not be made, people would fly off the earth and go, no one knows whither. Why, all the suns, moons, and stars of the universe are held in place by gravitation. If we are ever hurt through the action of that law it is because we were not happily related to it, that is all. The law is good, and what we have to do is to learn to work with it.

“It is just so with this law of heredity. It is the law of transmission. It works right along and transmits good or evil. It is our part to relate ourselves to it so that it will transmit mostly good. When we come to think of it, we see that that is what it principally does. Health, and honesty, and virtue, all good traits, are so constantly transmitted that we do not think of their coming through heredity, just as we do not think of all order and stability coming through gravity; but when undesirable traits are inherited we complain of the law, just as we complain when we are hurt through the law of gravitation. But do you not see that it is the very fact that the law is sure, that it invariably transmits evil, is one guarantee of its surety in transmitting good? Indeed, the Bible tells us that good is transmitted in greater degree than evil. The third commandment gives us the law of heredity: ’For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.’ That does not mean thousands of individuals, but, as the revised version gives it, ‘thousands of generations.’ So you see what encouragement this law gives us. The evil in us is to be transient, the good everlasting. Instead of being weighed down by our undesirable inheritances, we should be encouraged to overcome them and to cultivate our good ones.”

“Mamma, don’t you think the fathers have something to do as well as the mothers, in trying to give a better inheritance to the children?”

“I surely do, and that is where I think a girl needs to be especially wise in the choice of a husband. If a man has traits or habits that she would not want her children to have, she should remember that, through the law of heredity, that trait is one they will be very likely to inherit.

“Girls quite often think it does not matter if a young man smokes, or even if he drinks a little, but when we study heredity we see what a threat such habits are to the health and welfare of his children. I remember when John Orland was a handsome young man, he drank, sometimes to excess. Kittie Claiborne knew this, and her friends opposed her marrying him, but she thought she could reform him, and you know the result. Her husband is a confirmed drunkard, as is her youngest son. The oldest drinks, too, though not to such excess, and you know that Kitty Orland, such a beautiful girl, has more than once been found under the influence of liquor. The second girl died of consumption, and the second son is weak-minded.”

“But, mamma, do you mean that this is all because Mr. Orland drinks?”

“The observation of scientific men as to the effects of alcohol through inheritance would lead us to think so. I find this little item in the paper. You may read it.”

Helen read

“European scientists have recently given much attention to the physical degradation among children which they believe to be the result of intemperance on the part of the parents. A startling example was recently published in the London Daily News:

“Some months ago a workman and his wife, accompanied by a small boy of four, waited on Doctor Garnier, the physician who presides over the insanity ward at the Paris Depot, or Central Police Station. The parents were in great distress, and the story they had to tell was that on two occasions the lad, their son, who was with them, had attempted to murder his baby brother. On the last occasion the mother had just arrived in time to prevent him from cutting the baby’s throat with a pair of scissors.

“Examined by Doctor Garnier, the child declared it was quite true that he wished to murder his brother, and that it was his firm intention to accomplish his purpose, sooner or later.

“Taking the parents into an adjoining room, Doctor Garnier said to the father, ‘Are you a drinker?’

“The man protested indignantly. He had never been drunk in his life. His wife backed up his assertion. Her husband, she said, was the most sober of men.

“‘Hold out your hand at arm’s length,’ said the doctor.

“The man obeyed. After a few seconds the hand began that devil’s dance to which alcohol fiddles the tune.

“‘As I thought,’ said the doctor. ’My poor fellow, you are an alcoholique.’

“He questioned the man, who, with tears in his eyes, related that, being a brewer’s drayman, it was his duty to deliver casks of beer to his master’s customers, carrying the casks up to various stages. A glass of wine was occasionally offered him as a pouboire. The total quantity so absorbed by him amounted to a liter, or a liter and a half per day. This had been going on steadily for several years.

“‘With the result,’ said the doctor, ’that you, who have never been drunk, have become so completely alcoholized that you have transmitted to that unfortunate baby in the next room a form of epilepsy which has developed into homicidal mania.’”

“Isn’t it awful, mamma? I should not want to marry a man who drinks.”

“I sincerely hope you never will. But there are other habits that are evil in their effects. Smoking, for example.”

“O, mamma, smoking isn’t inherited, is it?”

“Well, I don’t know but we might say that it is. I knew a woman who was an inveterate smoker. When her baby was born, it cried night and day until one day the mother, nearly distracted, took the pipe from her mouth and put it between the baby’s lips and it stopped crying at once, and after that she took that method to still its cries. You see, it had been under the influence of tobacco all the time before it was born, and when it no longer felt that influence it was uncomfortable until it had the tobacco again. You know how hard it is for a man to give up smoking. All poisons by long use make such an impression on the body that it suffers when the poisons are taken away.

“Tobacco paralyzes the nerves of sensation, so that feeling is lessened. That is why men like to use it. They think they feel better, when in reality they feel less, or not at all; and to have no feeling or power to feel is a dangerous condition. Pain, or sensation, is our great protection, and to remove sensation by paralysis is to render ourselves open to danger. This paralytic condition may become an inheritance. Many children have infantile paralysis because their fathers are users of tobacco.”

“I am glad my father doesn’t use it,” exclaimed Helen with emphasis.

“Indeed, you may well be glad, and you can see to it that your children have the same cause for rejoicing. The girls of to-day have a wonderful influence on all time, the present and the future. I wish they knew how to use it wisely.”

“But girls think it is manly to smoke. I’ve heard lots of them say so. Stella Wilson says she wouldn’t marry a man that didn’t smoke; and Kate Barrows said the other day that she thought girls had no right to interfere with the enjoyment of men by asking them to give up smoking. She said she knew how nice it was, for she had tried it; and she said the most fashionable women smoke, and she means to smoke when she has a home of her own.”

“All of which only proves that she is a poor, ignorant girl who does not know her own value to herself, or to the world. She may yet have cause to weep over children made weak and nervous, or who have died because of her ignorance.”

“Isn’t it sad that ignorance does not save us from punishment?”

“Yes, but it does not. If you can’t swim, you may drown, even while trying to save another. God’s laws cannot vary to save us from the penalty of ignorance.

“I wonder now, dear, if you are not beginning to see the greatness of woman’s work. In her own vigor she creates health for the future of the nation. So you see whether you wear your overshoes or not, may be a question of importance to the race. By her virtue, courage, patience, purity, she is storing up those qualities for the men and women of the future. By her demanding of her future husband that he shall be without fear and without reproach, as clean in life and thought as herself, she is building up protections around the children of generations to come. Even the young girls of to-day are creating national conditions for the future, are deciding the destiny of the nation, yes, of the race. The great structures that men build will in time perish, but character is eternal. Is it not even a greater thing to be a woman than to be a man?”

“I begin to think so, and I think after this I’ll try to feel that even I am of importance to the world, instead of regretting that I am not a man.”