d and sufficient reason why the daughter of drunken parents,
very often attractive to some men by reason of their excitable,
vivacious, neurotic manner, should be carefully avoided by young men
in search of wives. The man who marries the daughter of an inebriate
not only endangers his own happiness, but runs the risk of entailing
upon his children an inheritance of degradation and misery.

"No woman should marry a man who, even occasionally, drinks to excess.
Further, the disposition of the sons of drunken parents ought to be
investigated before any girl becomes engaged to one of them. This is
one instance in which long engagements are not to be condemned, for,
if the man has inherited the alcoholic craving, it may become known in
time, and his _fiancee_ may be saved from the most terrible fate that
I can think of--becoming the wife of a drunkard.

"One word more before I leave this aspect of the subject. As the
majority of inebriates are sufferers from a disease which is partly
the result of hereditary predisposition, it is foolish for any woman
to marry a drunkard in the belief that she can reform him. If women
would realize that alcoholism is a disease and not a vice, they would
understand that, while the spirit which prompts their devotion and
self-sacrifice is praiseworthy, yet the probability of its success is
very remote. No doubt there are women who have made this experiment
and who have managed to 'reform,' as it is called, confirmed
inebriates; but such cases are by no means numerous. While it might
not be right to attempt to interfere with any effort to benefit any
representative of suffering humanity, it must be remembered that the
fate of the next generation is at stake, and that unborn children
certainly have rights, although we are very apt to disregard them.
Admitting, then, that anyone is at liberty to risk everything, even
life itself, to benefit another, nevertheless it cannot be said that
anyone has a moral right to jeopardize the future of a family to
satisfy any instinct or feeling of affection, however noble it may be.
If what I have written is true, no woman is justified in marrying a
drunkard."

The unstable nervous organization bequeathed by intemperate parents is
like a sword of Damocles over the heads of their unfortunate children,
and even moderate drinkers will not give vigorous bodies and strong
wills to their descendants. One man boasted that he had used a bottle
of wine daily for fift