Many persons are born into the world with disordered organizations for which they are not themselves responsible. Such individuals are entitled to the sympathy of humanity. Dyspepsia, scrofula, consumption, and a thousand ills to which mankind is heir, are inherited from parents, the results of ill-assorted marriages. Intoxicated parents often produce offspring utterly demented. Children of healthy parents, with good constitutions, are usually healthy and intelligent. There are marked varieties of character in children of the same parents. One manifests great precocity, another is below the average in mental attainments; one is amiable, another irritable in disposition; indeed, there are often as great differences between children of the same, as of different families. This is due to the physical and mental conditions of the parents, more especially the mother, not only at the time of the impregnation but also during the period intervening between conception and the birth of the offspring. The ancients regarded courage as the principal virtue. By us, purity is so estimated. Moral purity is an essential requisite to the growth and perfection of the character. SELF-ABUSE. Untold miseries arise from the pollution of the body. Self-pollution, or onanism, is one of the most prolific sources of evil, since it leads both to the degradation of body and mind. It is practiced more or less by members of both sexes, and the habit once established, is overcome with the greatest difficulty. It is the source of numerous diseases which derange the functional activity of the organs involved, and eventually impair the constitution. This vicious habit is often practiced by those who are ignorant of its dangerous results. Statistics show that insanity is frequently caused by masturbation. Immoderate indulgence in any practice is deleterious to the individual. Emphatically true is this with regard to sexual excesses. Not unfrequently does the marriage rite "cover a multitude of sins." The abuse of the conjugal relation produces the most serious results to both parties, and is a prolific source of some of the gravest forms of disease. Prostatorrhea, spermatorrhea, impotency, hypochondria, and general debility of the generative organs, arise from sexual excesses. The health of the reproductive organs can only be maintained by leading a _temperate_ life. The food should be nourishing but not stimulating. Lascivious thoughts should be banished from the mind, and a taste cultivated for that literature which is elevating in its nature, and the associations should be refining and ennobling. Let these conditions and the rules of hygiene, be observed, and virtue will reward her subjects with a fine physique and a noble character.