132 ANDREW JACKSON HOWE. 



been held in restraint. Parents are at fault for not 

 instructing their children to avoid the road that leads 

 ultimately to evil. A " taste for liquor," in the ordi- 

 nary acceptance of the term, is never inherited, but a 

 love of mental exhilaration may be hereditary. 



The opium habit, so called, is not often inher- 

 ited, except among Chinese, yet may be readily ac- 

 quired. A few doses of morphia administered to 

 allay pain or to overcome insomnia, may beget a lik- 

 ing for the drug's intoxicating influence. The aver- 

 age man is not harmed by the medication, but the ex- 

 ceptional partaker is. At least so experience proves. 

 An "opium eater" may spring from the most tem- 

 perate and self-denying family in Christendom, and 

 become as debased as the most degraded among man- 

 kind. 



As I stated in regard to alcoholism, the taste of 

 the intoxicant is not bewitching, but a depressed 

 mental state calls for a stimulant ; so it is with opium. 

 The nauseous drug is not beloved, is generally dis- 

 gusting, yet the stupefying effect of the opiate is en- 

 ticing, too much so to be resisted by a person whose 

 moral strength has been undermined by long periods 

 of indulgence. 



The chewing of tobacco is not an inherited, but 

 an acquired habit. Think of a child with an instinct- 

 ive love for the taste or effect of " the weed !" There 

 is a worm which feeds upon the tender leaves of 

 growing tobacco, which inherits a love for the succu- 

 lent plant, but a desire to chew the narcotic which 

 man has acquired is not transmitted as a legacy to 

 children. A disposition to chew something as a pas- 

 time is easily acquired, and if that something be a 

 narcotic, a habit hard to resist is soon established. 



