A confirmed alcoholic should be prevented, if possible, from marriage, because his sins will be visited upon his posterity. {112} The first children of an alcoholic may be mentally sound, the younger children are more or less mentally weak, the youngest are not uncommonly imbeciles, or idiots, or under shock they grow insane. Fortunately many of the children of alcoholics die at an early age, and the family of a drunkard very seldom lasts beyond four generations. In the first generation moral depravity and alcoholic excess are found; in the second, chronic drunkenness and mania; in the third, melancholia, hypochondria, impulsive and homicidal ideas; in the fourth, idiocy, imbecility, and extinction of the family. The lower the social caste of the drunkard, the greater the liability of meeting these blights. Priests should take a deep interest in societies established for the promotion of temperance, and the only temperance for most persons is total abstinence. No man knows what latent tendency to alcoholism he may have, especially in America, where great grandfathers are unknown and the climate and life are trying on the nervous system. The adulterated liquors sold everywhere at present make the danger greater than it ever was. Whatever may be the truth as regards heredity, there is no doubt concerning the strong influence of environment; therefore get into the temperance societies the children of alcoholic parents, of parents that are shiftless, hysterical, irritable. If a man has a violent temper or if he is unchaste, get him and his children into the society to check the downward drift. A bad temper is a neurotic taint, and it commonly is a first step toward alcoholism. Do not forget to warn the people against patent medicines that contain alcohol. If you go over the list of the families in a parish, it is startling to find how few there are without one or more "black sheep." The human black sheep, in a good environment, is always physically imperfect, and never so black as the gossips paint him. He may be a powerful football player, but there is something wrong with his gray matter. He is morally deaf, he was born so, and he is to be excused if he can not always hear the still, small voice. This may sound like lax doctrine, but it is true, nevertheless.