FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127  
128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   >>  
," said Wauna, sadly; "her little innocent, helpless child that Nature gave her to love and cherish, and make noble and useful and happy." "Did she inflict a permanent injury?" I asked, with increased astonishment at this new phase of refinement in the Mizora character. "No one can tell the amount of injury a blow does to a child. It may immediately show an obvious physical one; it may later develop a mental one. It may never seem to have injured it at all, and yet it may have shocked a sensitive nature and injured it permanently. Crime is evolved from perverted natures, and natures become perverted from ill-usage. It merges into a peculiar structure of the brain that becomes hereditary." "What became of the prisoner's child?" "It was adopted by a young lady who had just graduated at the State College of the State in which the mother resided. It was only five years old, and its mother's name was never mentioned to it or to anyone else. Long before that, the press had abolished the practice of giving any prominence to crime. That pernicious eloquence that in uncivilized ages had helped to nourish crime by a maudlin sympathy for the criminal, had ceased to exist. The young lady called the child daughter, and it called her mother." "Did the real mother never want to see her child?" "That is said to be a true picture of her," said Wauna; "and who can look at it and not see sorrow and remorse." "How could you be so stern?" I asked, in wondering astonishment. "Pity has nothing to do with crime," said Wauna, firmly. "You must look to humanity, and not to the sympathy one person excites when you are aiding enlightenment. That woman wandered about these beautiful grounds, or sat in this elegant home a lonely and unsympathized-with prisoner. She was furnished with books, magazines and papers, and every physical comfort. Sympathy for her lot was never offered her. Childhood is regarded by my people as the only period of life that is capable of knowing perfect happiness, and among us it is a crime greater than the heinousness of murder in your country, to deprive a human being of its childhood--in which cluster the only unalloyed sweets of life. "A human being who remembers only pain, rebukes treatment in childhood, has lost the very flavor of existence, and the person who destroyed it is a criminal indeed." CHAPTER VI. There was one peculiarity about Mizora that I noticed soon after my arrival, but
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127  
128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   >>  



Top keywords:
mother
 

natures

 

perverted

 

prisoner

 

injured

 
called
 
person
 

criminal

 
sympathy
 

astonishment


childhood

 

physical

 
Mizora
 

injury

 
aiding
 

existence

 
excites
 
enlightenment
 

wandered

 

beautiful


grounds

 

destroyed

 

flavor

 

noticed

 

peculiarity

 

arrival

 

remorse

 

wondering

 

firmly

 

CHAPTER


humanity

 
treatment
 

period

 

capable

 

knowing

 
perfect
 

sorrow

 
cluster
 

unalloyed

 
people

happiness
 

heinousness

 
murder
 
greater
 

deprive

 

country

 
regarded
 

Childhood

 
rebukes
 

remembers