really does lead them to be bad. No one ever talked to me as you
have to-night, and I am sure it makes me want to be better."

[Illustration]

"That ought to be the effect, and I believe it would be if boys were
only 'told right,' as you say. But I have told you only half the story.
Here is another picture. These are called _ova_. One is an _ovum_, and
these are the principle the mother gives to the future child. They are
greatly magnified. It would take 240 of them lying side by side to make
a row an inch long, so we say they are 1/240 of an inch in
diameter, but tiny as they are, each ovum contains all the traits or
talents that the mother gives to the child of which this particular ovum
may form a part. Your mother is English, your father American. Their
childhood and youth were spent thousands of miles apart, and yet both
were working by the habits of their lives to create you in your peculiar
traits and talents. Are you like your parents in any of their
capabilities?"

"Yes, I am like mother in her love for music; you know she is a fine
musician."

"Yes, and in the cultivation of her own musical ability she made it
easier for you to learn music; just as your father, in his study as an
engineer, has given you a love for mathematics."

"But my grandfather and great-grandfather were engineers, and I am going
to be one, too."

"It is true that you inherit from your grandparents, also, but it must
be through your parents, and they may have changed the direction of
the inheritance. This important fact you should know and remember.
You can change yourself by education so that the inheritance of your
children may be quite changed. For example, if you know that you
lack perseverance, you can, by constantly making a mighty effort to
overcome this defect, compel yourself to persevere, and this would
tend to give your children perseverance. So you see we need not
despair because we have inherited faults from our ancestors, but we
should determine all the more that we will not pass these defects on
to later generations."

"I guess that is what Dr. Brice meant when he said that mother's good
care of her health had overcome in us children to a great extent the
tendency to consumption which is in her family. Nearly all my cousins on
her side die with it, but when she was a little girl her father made her
live out of doors all the time and she grew strong, and we none of us
seem to have any tendency to consumption."

"Yo