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THE NAUTILUS. Build thee more stately mansions, oh, my soul, As the swift seasons roll. Leave thy low vaulted past, Devoted to the Art and Science of Self-Expression. ... Entered at the Holyoke Post Office Let each new temple, nobler than the last, as second class matter. Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free; leaving thine out-grown shell By life's unresting sea.— Holmes’ “ The Nautilus.” VfjT ATT i MONTHLY. f V C J L _ ,. V I . 1 Fifty Cents a Year. Í 1 ELIZABETH TOWNE, 1 IXT/"» t Q OCTOBER, 1904. ' H o l y o k e , M assachusetts . | 1 N U . 1 2 - , carriage. When somebody told him he was grow­ odist—and I would rather suffer than to use any ing stoop-shouldered just like his poor dear pa means she’d not approve.” 6 od is the iöbole -love all and you love he set himself to straighten his shoulders and Talk about Chinamen 1 God; widen his chest. When another friend told him That is the sort of spirit through which we Soul and body, shy and sea and sod. he looked at things just as his blessed ma did he “ inherit” the diseases and deaths of our family. immediately hunted for another side of the ques­ The fathers’ sins are visited upon the children even tion to look at. to the third and fourth generation because the A few months o f this changed living made a children hug their fathers’ sins. The fathers’ sins different creature o f him. He not only looked are visited upon the children because the children ANSELMO. different but felt and thought and acted like a make a virtue and a business of entertaining them. Years did I vainly seek the good Lord’s grace, different being, and he began to feel hopeful and They can be got rid of as any other unpleasant Prayed, fasted and did penance dire and dread; energetic. So he kept it up with still more reso­ visitors can be, by firing them. If we keep on Did kneel with bleeding knees and rainy face, lution. He went in for early rising and retiring, entertaining them it is our own fault, not our And mouth the dust with ashes on my head; physical culture, vegetarian and raw food fads, fathers’ ; they are now our visitors, not our fath- Yet, still with knotted scourge the flesh I flayed, bicycling, golf, tennis, sociability—anything and ' ers’ ; and the ill results are our own fault, not Rent fresh the wounds, and moaned and everything he could think of which he was sure theirs. If you want Bible authority for this, turn to shrieked insanely; his family never would have thought of. Ezekiel x v iii, where you will find the matter A froth oozed with the pleadings that I made, And thirty-five or forty years afterward he hunted up that Quack Doctor and thanked him for explained at length, in the words of God himself. And yet I prayed on vainly, vainly, vainly: setting him on the road to health, happiness, suc­ You will find yourself forbidden to say that “ the A time, from out of swoon, I lifted eye, cess and long life. He exhibited with pride his fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s T o find a wretched outcast, gray and grim, biceps and his six inches chest expansion, and teeth are set on edge,”— forbidden, because that Bathing my brow with many a pitying sigh, dared the Q. D. to produce from anywhere a proverb is a lie. In verse twenty God says And I did pray God’s grace might rest on him— sturdier man of his age. through Ezekiel this: Then, lo, a gentle voice fell on mine ears— "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son One swallow never makes a summer, nor does “ Thou shalt not sob in suppliance hereafter;— shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither a whole family compel one swallow to follow its Take up thy prayers and wring them dry of tears, shall the father bear the iniquity o f the son : the ] own bad examples. Environment pretty nearly And lift them, white and pure, with love and righteousness o f the righteous shall be upon him, makes the man; his own way of re-acting on his laughter.” and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon environment completes the making. Our family him.” So is it now for all men else I pray; starts us off with a certain definite family environ- The sins of the fathers are visited upon the chil­ So is it I am glad and blest alway. i ment o f thought and action. A mere machine dren as long as the children invite such visitation Jam es W hitcomb R ilev. would k^cp on confnmH] g to family traction s mi ~EiriTraifdowtfand stoppe3 in the family burial plot. “ —invite it Dy living and acting and thinking as WHEN SINS COME A-VI SITING But a human being is not a machine, and it is his their fathers did. business and privilege to change his environment, The young man who listened to the Quack “ I just heard of a man who has had insanity in to improve on the family thought and action. Doctor simply made things so lively around his his family for over twenty-five years. Now will house that the consumption of his fathers was you please tell through your good paper what les­ A Chinaman considers it sacrilege to live better glad to hike. son could be learned from that? Because a parent or think higher than his father did. If his father The man who has had “ insanity in the family does wrong, does it look just for the children to lived like a goose and died a consumptive he have to suffer too? What would you do if you for twenty-five years” can get it out of the family would deliberately follow. Only the fact that the thought you were going to lose your mind?” by the same means. He can quit living and acting Miriam. Chinese are a hard-working, light-eating, out­ as his crazy relatives did. The other day I read of a man who came of the door-living race has saved them from utter exter­ Good healthy outdoor activity is the greatest union of two families of consumptives. Mother mination through this slavish adherence to the insanity-squelcher in existence. Insane people and father and aunts and uncles and grandparents traditions of their fathers. naturally hug dark corners and think about them­ All the Chinese are not confined to China— had all died o f consumption before the ages of selves and their feelings. more’s the pity. IIow many of us Americans are i thirty-five or forty. The man himself was thin I knew a big family in which one girl went in­ and sallow and narrow chested, and about twenty- afflicted with family pride? How many times a sane. They lived on a farm, and the parents and one or so, when he met a Quack Doctor to whom day do we hear the statement that this trait or ten of the children lived active farm lives. But he told his tale o f woe and remarked that “of that is “ inherited” ? How many parade their re­ this girl who went insane hated work as a cat course he must die as his family had.” semblance to some grouchy or choleric old an­ hates water. She loved to sit in the best room “ Not unless you choose to,” the Quack Doctor cestor who happened to have “come over in the and devour novels, and a call to help wash the replied, “—live as unlike your family as possible Mayflower,” or who was “the bully o f his regi­ dishes or milk the cows made her angry. Her and you will not die as they did.” ment” ? How many of us actually look for family mother was one of the easy-going kind who hated Now the man really wanted to live, and the peculiarities and pride ourselves upon family re­ rows. So she never called on Anna except in Quack Doctor’s words stuck in his memory. He semblance? How many look with complaisance extreme need and Anna soon learned that a show began to notice how his family had lived, and to upon even the worst of family failings, merely of temper would get her her own way. She cul­ instinctively change his ways. They lived in close because they are family failings? How many pre­ tivated rages and sentimental reading and grew rooms with shades and shutters tight, trembled serve old recipes and customs and costumes and thin, anaemic and eczcmic. And everybody ex­ at draughts, bundled themselves up to their noses furniture, and shut out the sunlight and ruin the cused her because she was “so odd” and “ so when they went out, stayed in as much as possible, family digestion to do it? How many whose intellectual”—and because it was harder work to áte three hearty meals a day, and pieced between remote ancestors have been lost in the American get her to do anything than it was to do it them­ times. shuffle, have set up new family traits and customs selves. So the man began to eschew these things, one based upon the peculiarities of parents or some A tall smooth stranger came courting Anna at a time and as fast as he dared—just to see if relative who has made his pile? How many boys Nobody knew him and many distrusted him.

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