EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL ON CHARACTER. 385 



dren's teetli are set on edge," is sternly true. What, then, can we legiti- 

 mately expect to be manifested in the next generation ? Further, if 

 children are taught to frequent taverns, and drink there on holidays and 

 Sundays, by their fond but foolish parents, what eifect must this exert 

 upon the character during the plastic period of youth and growth ? How 

 far are the inherited mental constitution and nervous system, already 

 depraved to start with, still further modified by such experience of the 

 individual in childhood, when " wax to receive but marble to retain ? " 

 Conditions already hard enough upon the child are aggravated by indis- 

 cretions perpetrated toward the infant before its own free will and 

 choice can be called into play, before it is responsible for its own ac- 

 tions. Not only have its parents given it an imperfect organization, 

 but they are prejudicing its chances of self-evolution before it has had 

 an opportunity of forming its own decision — it is handicapped alike by 

 descent and by mischievous early training. 



The habit of frequenting taverns, of drinking, and of feeling the 

 self-satisfaction so induced, leads to still further indulgence in alcohol 

 by half-grown youths ; and so the inherited character is still further 

 deteriorated. The increasing loss of self-control leaves such beings 

 less and less capable of resisting the temptations, the allurements of 

 the public-house. The impulsive and less perfectly controlled nervous 

 system craves more and more for the alcoholic stimulant ; and the 

 longings are intensified accordingly. The repeated visits to the tavern 

 grow into a custom, and what commences as an irregular practice be- 

 comes crystallized into a habit. 



Nor is it in youths alone that the drinking customs of the day are 

 seen in their evil and sombre aspects. The number of respectable girls 

 seen now at public bars is a contrast to what obtained but a few years 

 ago. Up to a recent period, if a girl were known to frequent taverns, 

 her character was gone ; and it was rarely that a well-conducted girl 

 was seen in a public-house, and then only with her sweetheart or some 

 male relatives. But now it is sadly difi'erent. From familiarity with 

 bars as an outcome of excursions, and even more from the associations 

 of the music-hall, girls, capable of better things, are not now apparently 

 conscious of any impropriety in being in a public-house without male 

 friends ; and the painful spectacle of seeing young girls under twenty 

 treating each other at a public bar is a sadly too common occurrence. 

 How can a girl, with the mobile nervous system of her sex, be fitted 

 to be a mother, and to counteract the evil tendencies of alcoholic in- 

 dulgence in the father, if she herself have been subjected to the same 

 influence ? With the facts of inheritance before us, what may we ex- 

 pect, what must we apprehend as to the condition — the future pros- 

 pects — of the generation following immediately after this one ? As our 

 forefathers insensibly and unconsciously built up the character of the 

 present generation, so it, in its turn, is fashioning the character of its 

 successors, its unborn offspring. No wonder, then, that the morale as 



TOL. XIT. — 25 



