“Her father’s head was bowed with grief. The mother became hard and irritable, growing to hate the child who had brought on them so much sorrow and shame. I grieved for them, but I never understood the case till I heard you speak of the mother’s power over her unborn child. Now I see that Maria was the victim of her parents’ ignorance.”[2] [2] Dr. Sanger, who is authority on the subject of prostitution, says that the observation of years among the abandoned class, has led him to the conclusion that only one woman in a thousand is brought to adopt the life of a prostitute from the same sensual proclivities that make a man consort with the abandoned. Seduction by a lover, followed by the rejection of society, poverty, inability to labor, desire for elegant clothing, and various other causes, have brought the other nine hundred and ninety-nine into this bitter degradation. The young girl alluded to above was one of the exceptions. Since while pregnant--women, sad to say, have been constantly forced to yield their persons to the lusts of the husband, they have in spirit rebelled against the unnatural demand, instead of heartily assenting. VIOLATION OF SEXUAL LAW DURING PREGNANCY. I will briefly refer to another instance where the child so fatally endowed was a boy. The sisters of this boy--women of some presence--were already married, and mothers, when their mother found herself pregnant at forty-five. The husband was much gratified at the prospect of becoming a father at sixty, and expressed this satisfaction in frequent relations with his wife. It so happened that their pecuniary circumstances were easier than at any previous time, and the wife employed “help,” which relieved her of all the severer household duties. She was not an intellectual or cultivated woman, and the unaccustomed leisure did not prove a boon, since it left her with unspent strength to meet and respond to the demands made upon her quite up to the time of the infant’s arrival. Thus, you see, the boy had imparted to him over-active amativeness, combined with small mental activities. How should he when a man restrain _his_ passions, when during all his ante-natal life his parents had put no restraint on theirs? He did not. He showed himself a low bully among his school-mates, and the dread of the younger girls, before he had reached his “teens.” After that, his sensual, brutal behavior actually repelled his boy-companions. When a man, he barely escaped being the inmate of a prison, as he had been already of worse places. The man who is dominated by this one quality is very often handsome, magnetic, and attractive to women. He boasts privately, if not publicly, of his conquests, holding no reputation sacred.