to us if one should sit down and write his will and say: "I bequeath to
my daughter Mary my yellow, blotched and pimpled complexion, resulting
from my own bad habits of life. I bequeath to my son John, the effects
of my habits of dissipation in my youth, with a like love for alcoholic
liquors and tobacco. I bequeath to my son Harry my petulant, irritable
disposition, and the rheumatic gout which I have brought upon myself by
disobedience to physical law; and to my daughter Elizabeth, my trembling
nerves and weak moral nature." But this is, in truth, what many parents
do, and the children find it a sad, instead of an amusing fact.

On the other hand, if one has led a life of uprightness and morality,
and has obeyed physical law, his children will inherit his physical
vigor, and his moral stamina. It becomes of exceeding great importance
that these facts should be known to the young, in order that they may
endeavor to overcome their own weaknesses, and strengthen their own good
qualities for the sake of future generations.

This heredity, the transmission of the qualities of the parent to the
child, is found among plants and animals as well as in the human race.
The seed of a plant produces another plant of the same kind, and the
farmer knows when he sows wheat, that his harvest will be wheat, and he
should know just as certainly that if he "sows wild oats" in his youth
he may expect "wild oats" in his children. The character of the food we
eat, the air we breathe, the occupations we follow, the habits we
create, are the forces which shape not only our own destiny, but create
the tendencies of our children.

With these thoughts in mind, the question of the use of narcotics
becomes one of great importance. There are few, if any, tobacco users
who are anxious that their boys should early begin the use of the weed.
But they do not realize the fact that in their own use of it they may
have diminished the vital force of these boys, transmitting a tendency
to disease, or perhaps an appetite for the tobacco itself, and not only
will the boys feel the effects, but the girls as well. As the thought of
men is turned in this direction, proofs are accumulating of the evil
results to the children of tobacco-using parents. A prominent physician
says: "I have never known an habitual tobacco user whose children did
not have deranged nerves, and sometimes weak minds. Shattered nervous
systems, for generations to come, may be the result o