l possess the same deficiency.
Hence the hosts of deformed, scrofulous, weazen, and idiotic children
which curse the race, and testify to the sensuality of their progenitors.
Another reason is the physical and nervous exhaustion which the parents
bring upon themselves, and which totally unfits them to beget sound,
healthy offspring.

The effects of this evil may often be traced in a large family of
children, nearly all of whom show traces of the excesses of their
parents. It commonly happens, too, that such large families are on the
hands of poor men who cannot earn enough to give them sufficient food
and comfortable clothing, with nothing whatever to provide for their
education. The overburdened mother has her strength totally exhausted
by the excessive demands upon her system incident to child-bearing,
so that she is unable to give her children that culture and training
which all children need. More than as likely as not she feels that they
were forced upon her, and hence she cannot hold for them all that tender
sympathy and affection a mother should feel. The little ones grow up
ignorant and often vicious; for want of home care drives them to the
street. Thus does one evil create another.

It is certainly a question which deserves some attention, whether it
is not a sin for parents to bring into the world more children than
they can properly care for. If they can rear and educate three children
properly, the same work would be only half done for six; and there are
already in the world a sufficiency of half-raised people. From this
class of society the ranks of thieves, drunkards, beggars, vagabonds,
and prostitutes, are recruited. Why should it be considered an improper
or immoral thing to limit the number of children according to the
circumstances of the parents? Ought it not to be considered a crime
against childhood and against the race to do otherwise? It is seriously
maintained by a number of distinguished persons that man "is in duty
bound to limit the number of his children as well as the sheep on his
farm; the number of each to be according to the adequacy of his means
for their support."

Indulgence during Pregnancy.--Transgressions of this sort are followed
by the worst results of any form of marital excess. The mother suffers
doubly, because laden with the burden of supporting two lives instead
of one. But the results upon the child are especially disastrous. During
the time when it is receiving its sto