=The mother’s larger hereditary influence proven.=--Do you recall a drunken mother? How about the children? Dissipated and delinquent. A young lawyer, gifted, conceited, ambitious and eager for position and power had, according to his views, but one thing in his way to the goal of success--money. After thinking over the surest and best methods of getting money he decided to marry it. His first opportunity was a wealthy feeble-minded heiress. He married her. To their marriage five children were born. Three were positively mentally weak. The other two were noticeably so. Of these two, the first was a natural thief and the other a natural liar. Only one child resembled the young lawyer, the last one. =When training should begin.=--It was a saying of a Yale president that “a child’s training should begin with its grandparents.” Another has said, “A child’s training should begin one hundred years before it is born.” There is more truth in those quaint sayings than many are willing to accept. Most parents give their children no premeditated and intelligent prenatal training, and many think that when the child has become accountable is soon enough for its training to begin. =Children products of blind chance.=--There is an idea among many that every child comes straight from God and made to His order, and that parents are obediently to receive them when God sends them. Let the child be beautiful or homely, blonde or brunette, girl or boy, strong or feeble-minded, good or bad, no matter, God gave the child. Some think these things are all accidents, fortunes or misfortunes, or they belong to “the unknowable.” There are no accidents. Every effect has its cause. Nothing comes by chance alone. Unalterable and invariable law governs everything. The law of heredity is as unerring as the law of gravitation. Our ignorance of the law does not prevent its operation. =Robbed of their birthright.=--The great mass of people are not well-born. Aside from the degenerate criminal and the feeble-minded, universally recognized products of heredity, most people are below what nature would teach us they should be. They were born with mediocre capacities for business success and intellectual attainment. Give them the earliest and best advantages and training that this country affords and marked improvements will be made by them, but they will not make great men in any line of life work, for the simple reason that they cannot. It takes some natural capacity for the highest success. Occasionally a child of unusual gifts is born of parents much below the average. The parents and their friends are likely to believe the gift to be a special divine bestowment. But, if the child’s prenatal history could be fully known this would be accounted for on the basis of hereditary law. The unscientific farmer may occasionally raise a fine ear of corn or a very large crop of potatoes. But the intelligent, scientific farmer raises only the best.