Read Ebook: Transmission; or Variation of Character Through the Mother by Kirby Georgiana Bruce

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Excess of amativeness--the faculty most blindly abused hitherto--has worked most cruel wrong. Goaded by stimulants it has murdered its willing slave, sought satisfaction in promiscuous relations which destroy conjugal love, changing it to lust,--levied tax on the other organs of the brain, dragging them with itself to a shameful death.

The difference between Love and Lust is the difference between heaven and hell. Love seeks only the happiness of the being loved, and is as refined in its most private as in its public demeanor. Lust cares only for selfish, animal gratification, without regard to the slave who gives enforced consent.

To common observation the more reverent and kindly demeanor of the lad as he approaches puberty demonstrates the refining, ameliorating nature of conjugal love.

The radiant countenance of the modest wife, the harmonious faces of the chaste and loving pair, justify their lives.

Marriage is a partnership for the higher development of each party, and the continuance of the race.

This state of things will continue as long as women grow up ignorant of the laws of their own being; as long as mothers bring up their sons and daughters in absolute ignorance of what is right and wrong in marriage--the mother thinking she is modest and refined when she blushes before the honest facts of nature.

What father instructs his son before marriage as to his behavior under that most sacred bond? What mother advises with her daughter, assuring her that she is to be the judge and regulator in her private life with her husband? Too often the health of both is impaired, and the mutual attraction destroyed, because knowledge came too late. Instead of this, the young wife should be proud to say, "My mother taught me that this relation should take place very seldom. We shall be less happy if we are intemperate." The man who married her because he loved and admired her, would willingly be guided by her to a true continence. As it is, she evades the responsibility, and abandons soul and body to the undisciplined will of one as ignorant of law as herself. Here, as elsewhere, men, and women too, persuade themselves that subserviency in woman is lovely as in a man it is contemptible.

DESIRES AND FANCIES.

A superstition is common among the ignorant that every whim, every craving of the pregnant woman should be gratified, or the child will be "marked." I once heard of a woman who, shortly before her confinement, insisted on having a pint of whisky, and because it was thought best to give her only half a pint, the child was never satisfied and drank himself to death.

It is true that the very great change in the system, the forces now specially drawn to the womb which before were equally distributed throughout the body, leaves the stomach often in a very delicate condition, needing more acid or less, more flesh and less vegetable diet, or the reverse, as the case may be, and there should certainly be no pains spared in providing the mother with the food that she can relish and digest, or in her yielding to her innocent and harmless fancies. The first months are often wearisome and depressing. She feels restless and unsettled, and should be treated with patient sympathy even if she seems a little unreasonable.

BIRTH-MARKS.

DEFICIENT CHILDREN.

The union of young persons, affectionate, but unintellectual and ignorant of law, is followed, not unfrequently, by more or less deficiency in the first child. No restraint is put on the passions, as it is believed that after the legal ceremony has taken place any amount of indulgence is permissible.

More cases of deficiency are found in the families of the rich, and of the brutalized and ignorant poor, than in households whose moderate circumstances necessarily force some domestic duties on the wife. The simplest household labors involve the exercise of calculation, perception, order and judgment, not to mention the good to the body of the exercise of many sets of muscles. Consider, then, the loss to the unborn where wealth has secured abundant service and the pregnant condition is made an excuse for indolence and over-indulgence!

If the young couple have planned their life wisely; if they are hospitably inclined, it may be musical and social at once, and the wife especially take some kindly interest in the welfare of those less favored than themselves, all will be safe so far as the intellect is concerned; and if the delicate consideration and courtesy felt and shown before marriage by each to the other continue after the union is consummated, a happy temperament, a pleasing natural manner may be expected for the child.

But if these conditions do not exist, the first child will be greatly inferior to those that follow it, since the most indolent and selfish mother will expend some thought on her own little one after its arrival.

It would be well if the unmarried would visit asylums where idiots and inebriates bear testimony to their ante-natal conditions.

OVER-EXERTION.

Over-exertion during pregnancy is almost as hurtful as indolence, depriving the unborn of those vital forces necessary to a well-constituted existence.

In no country called civilized does the pregnant woman overtax her strength as she does in these United States. This fact is quite sufficient to account for the very general want of robustness, vigor, and firm health, especially among our women. I refer here principally to our farmers' and mechanics' wives.

When the mare has performed the labor that is good for her, she is turned into the sunny pasture for the rest of the day. But there is no considerate arrangement for the wife's walking in green meadows to drink in the beauties of nature, and absorb the invigorating sunlight when she has had as much exercise as is good for her. She cooks and scours, washes and irons, makes and mends, churns, quilts, makes preserves, pickles, rag mats, washes dishes three times a day, saves and contrives , attends the meetings of her religious society, helping at their fairs and socials; it is probable she takes a boarder or two in the summer, keeps up a limited correspondence with her family, and goes to bed every night so exhausted of her forces, that sleep has to be waited for, rising unrested to begin over again the dreary daily routine.

You say she has wonderful energy and ability. But why does she not give her children the benefit of her ambition and faculty? She put all the vitality, all the magnetism that belonged to her little daughter, into the kettles and pans, into the soap and butter. The butter may sell well in the market, but it will not atone for the absence of resource in her child.

Her boys are slow to apprehend, and will never aspire beyond the three R's. They lounge instead of sitting, and walk without dignity.

The girls lack stamina, and have not their mother's ambition to "put the work through." Poor things! They do not know that they were born tired, or they would offer that as an excuse. They are lacking in the magnetism that attracts, in the hopefulness and health that makes every day a satisfaction.

If the husband, on his farm, or in his factory, or store, has extra or increasing work, he forthwith hires more help; but as child after child add to the responsibilities and labors of the home, the mother struggles on unassisted, until at last she becomes a hopeless invalid, or sinks at middle age under her burdens, leaving her husband with his accumulated means to marry a younger woman, who sits in the parlor, hires plenty of servants--now considered quite necessary--and has a good time generally, on the savings of her predecessor.

The brother of whom I would speak was five years the senior of master Jefferson, a boy with a very large head, lack-lustre eyes, and a mixture of amiability and apathy in his air and manner. He relished neither work, or study, or play. I boarded in the family, and had ample opportunity for exact observation of the very different characters composing it. The parents were unusually rugged and hearty, and the children, with this one exception, took after them.

When, by careful steps, I led the mother back to the summer preceding dull Charley's birth, she was able to recall quite vividly the circumstances that had surrounded her, and the kind of life she led.

"Had she," I asked, "been unhappy?"

"Oh, dear no; she had had nothing to be unhappy about."

"Was she sick during any part of her pregnancy? Had she felt her condition a greater tax on her powers than was usual with her?"

"No; on the contrary, she had been filled with ambition."

Her husband's mother was making her first visit with them, and she was anxious to prove to her how good and "smart" a woman her son had married. Business had taken her husband away from home , and she had desired to surprise him on his return by all she had accomplished.

Here, you see, the mother's activity gave the large head, while what should have filled it with compact brain went into the butternut and preserves.

I have known women stand at the ironing-table ready to drop with fatigue, while they smoothed out the last crease from the kitchen towel.

It is a growing custom to embroider under-garments, night-dresses, etc. Such work is extremely fascinating, and women who can not afford to purchase it, will often allow themselves to stitch far into the night. This tends to make a child narrow-chested and short-sighted, and is unfavorable to good looks, and the embroidered garments do not make it as attractive as would a serene and sunny disposition. Grace is said to depend on excess of power. Insufficiency of power precludes this quality, which is even more fascinating than beauty itself.

After what has been said it will be seen that no greater mistake can be made than for a mother, while creating immortals, to drudge and scrimp for the sake of being some day well, or better off. While she has thus slaved, sparing herself no restful hours in which to enjoy the beauty of flower or field, in which to contemplate a beautiful face or graceful figure in real life or picture, in which to enjoy music or the creations of genius in literature, she has fixed irrevocably for this world the unsatisfactory status of her children who will so poorly adorn the new house when it is one day built.

There is a ministry without us visible and invisible, and angels find it difficult to approach with gifts the mother absorbed by household drudgery.

EFFECT OF IMAGINATION.

In a remote hamlet in one of the then young Western States, Mrs. F. became acquainted with a family which included nearly a dozen members, and nearly all married, and settled within easy distance of the old homestead. The sexes were pretty equally divided, each and every one of these young men and women being in appearance and character below mediocrity, with one exception. The latter was a young girl about nineteen years old, who was so evidently and remarkably superior both in personal appearance and nature, that it did not seem possible she could belong to the same family. Beside the heavy, coarse faces of her brothers and sisters, hers was angelic in its graceful contour, long-fringed lids and refined, expressive mouth. The very curly hair, which resembled the mother's only in its curliness, had a golden glint that removed it by several degrees of relationship from the wiry red on one side and faded black on the other, which crowned the broad, low heads of the gruff brothers and two drowsy-looking married sisters who were at this time home on a long visit.

This girl, now the successful teacher of the district-school, filled her place in the always untidy, dilapidated household, unconscious of being an anomaly. She had made some effort to brighten the dingy walls, and here and there the uneven floor of the living-room was concealed by pretty rag-mats of her making.

Notwithstanding the inferiority of the family as a whole, there was a general friendliness among the members, proceeding from the rough, but unfailing deference shown by the father to the mother. Nelly's wishes received a sort of grumbling attention, and her opinion was quoted as having weight. Still, owing to the very refined character of her attractions, they were evidently to a great extent overlooked by all but her mother.

Mrs. F. was a long while in getting hold of any clue that would explain this phenomenon.

No, Nelly was not born in that low dwelling under the shadow of those catalpas, but in a poorer shanty in Northern Tennessee.

No, there were no nice people thereabouts; no kind Methodist preacher visited them. They were sort of outside the "circuit."

No, there was no school-teacher boarded with them. There was quite a spell when there was a quarrel about whose land the school-house occupied, and school didn't keep more than three months any way.

In view of so much content in the midst of so much dirt and disorder, it did not seem worth while to ask if any one had lent her books which pleased her. However, the conversation evidently recalled pleasant memories, for the weather-beaten countenance of the kind-hearted old woman suddenly lit up, and her small eyes twinkled with happy light as she said:

"Then I could think of nothing but that book the rest of the day, I wanted it so bad, and at night I couldn't sleep for thinking of it. At last I got up, and without making a bit of noise, dressed myself, and walked four miles to Scranton Centre, where the peddler had told me he should stay that night--at the Browns--friends of ours, they were, and I got him up, and bought the book, and brought it back with me, just as contented and satisfied as you can believe. I looked it over and through, put it under my pillow, and slept soundly till morning.

"The next day I began to read the beautiful story. Every page took that hold of me that I forgot all about the pretty cover, and perhaps you wouldn't believe it, but before Nelly was born, if you would but give me a word here and there, I could begin at the beginning, and say it clear through to the end. It appeared to me I was there with those people by the lakes in the mountains--with Allan bane and his harp, Ellen Douglas, Malcolm Graeme, Fitz-James, and the others. I saw Ellen's picture before me when I was milking the cow, or cooking on the hearth, or weeding the little garden. There she was, stepping about so sweetly in the rhyme, that I felt it to be all true as the day, more true after I could repeat it to myself. And then when I found my baby grew into such a pretty girl, and so smart too, it seemed as if Providence had been ever so good to me again. But children are mysteries any way. I've wondered a thousand times why Nelly was such a lady, and why she loved to learn so much more than the other children. She has read to me ever since she was ten years old, and she's got quite a lot of books there, you see, ma'am. She's mighty fond of poetry, too."

RESULTS OF UNUSED TALENT.

To illustrate the advantages of healthful duties and self-esteem, and the evils following want of occupation, I will give the experience of an old friend, a former resident of this State. For convenience I will call her Mrs. Hosmer.

Mr. Hosmer went and came, wholly ignorant of the doubt in his wife's mind. He was now jovial and unreserved, now abstracted and anxious, as business promised success or failure; but always gentle and considerate with his wife. The latter was a sisterly rather than a wifely person. There was, therefore, a lack of spontaneity in the union, yet no real unhappiness on either side.

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