66 THE KALLIKAK FAMILY 



has never known shame; in a word, she has never 

 struggled and never suffered. Her husband is a 

 selfish, sullen, penurious person who gives his wife 

 but little money, so that she often resorts to selling soap 

 and other things among her neighbors to have something 

 to spend. At times she works hard in the field as a 

 farm hand, so that it cannot be wondered at that her 

 house is neglected and her children unkempt. Her 

 philosophy of life is the philosophy of the animal. 

 There is no complaining, no irritation at the inequalities 

 of fate. Sickness, pain, childbirth, death she ac- 

 cepts them all with the same equanimity as she accepts 

 the opportunity of putting a new dress and a gay ribbon 

 on herself and children and going to a Sunday School 

 picnic. There is no rising to the comprehension of the 

 possibilities which life offers or of directing circum- 

 stances to a definite, higher end. She has a certain 

 fondness for her children, but is incapable of real solici- 

 tude for them. She speaks of those who were placed 

 in homes and is glad to see their pictures, and has a 

 sense of their belonging to her, but it is faint, remote, and 

 in no way bound up with her life. She is utterly help- 

 less to protect her older daughters, now on the verge 

 of womanhood, from the dangers that beset them, or to 

 inculcate in them any ideas which would lead to self- 



