wife, and become an object of her ever-growing tenderness and
reverence? Assure her, by all your manifestations, and your perfect
respect for the functions of her nature, that your passion shall be
in subjection of her wishes. It is not enough that you have secured
in her heart respect for your spiritual and intellectual manhood. To
maintain your self-respect in your relations with her, to perfect
your growth and happiness as a husband, you must cause your _physical_
nature to be tenderly cherished and reverenced by her in all the
sacred intimacies of home. No matter how much she reverences your
intellectual or your social power, if by reason of your uncalled-for
passional manifestations you have made your physical manhood
disagreeable, how can you, in her presence, preserve a sense of manly
pride and dignity as a husband?

[Illustration]

* * * * *

HEALTH AND DISEASE.

Heredity and the Transmission of Diseases.

1. BAD HABITS.--It is known that the girl who marries the man with bad
habits, is, in a measure, responsible for the evil tendencies which
these habits have created in the children; and young people are
constantly warned of the danger in marrying when they know they come
from families troubled with chronic diseases or insanity. To be
sure the warnings have had little effect thus far in preventing such
marriages, and it is doubtful whether they will, unless the prophecy
of an extremist writing for one of our periodicals comes to pass--that
the time is not far distant when such marriages will be a crime
punishable by law.

2. TENDENCY IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.--That there is a tendency in the
right direction must be admitted, and is perhaps most clearly shown in
some of the articles on prison reform. Many of them strongly urge the
necessity of preventive work as the truest economy, and some go so far
as to say that if the present human knowledge of the laws of heredity
were acted upon for a generation, reformatory measures would be
rendered unnecessary.

3. SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES.--The mother who has ruined her health by
late hours, highly-spiced food, and general carelessness in regard to
hygienic laws, and the father who is the slave of questionable habits,
will be very sure to have children either mentally or morally inferior
to what they might otherwise have had a right to expect. But the
prenatal influences may be such that evils arising from such may be
modified to