30
A Solemn Appeal
bored, with his stronger energies. He suffers himself to be hurried with
business, and, through his anxiety to be rich, loses in a great measure
the sense of his obligation to his family, and does not measure aright
his wife’s power of endurance. He often enlarges his farm, requiring
an increase of hired help, which necessarily increases the housework.
The wife realizes every day that she is doing too much work for her
strength, yet she toils on, thinkIng the work must be done. She is
continually reaching down into the future, drawing upon her future
resources of strength, and is living upon borrowed capital, and at the
period when she needs that strength, it is not at her command; and if
she does not lose her life, her constitution is broken, past recovery.
If the father would become acquainted with physical law, he might
better understand his obligations and his responsibilities. He would see
that he had been guilty of almost murdering his children, by suffering
so many burdens to come upon the mother, compelling her to labor
beyond her strength before their birth, in order to obtain means to
leave for them. They nurse these children through their suffering
life, and often lay them prematurely in the grave, little realizing that
their wrong course has brought the sure result. How much better
to have shielded the mother of his children from wearing labor and
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mental anxiety, and let the children inherit good constitutions, and
give them an opportunity to battle their way through life, not relying
upon their father’s property, but upon their own energetic strength.
The experience thus obtained would be of more worth to them than
houses and lands, purchased at the expense of the health of mother
and children.
It seems perfectly natural for some men to be morose, selfish,
exacting, and overbearing. They have never learned the lesson of
self-control, and will not restrain their unreasonable feelings, let the
consequences be what they may. Such men will be repaid, by seeing
their companions sickly and dispirited, and their children bearing the
peculiarities of their own disagreeable traits of character.
It is the duty of every married couple to studiously avoid marring
the feelings of each other. They should control every look and ex-
pression of fretfulness and passion. They should study each other’s
happiness, in small matters, as well as in large, manifesting a tender
thoughtfulness, in acknowledging kind acts and the little courtesies of
each other. These small things should not be neglected, for they are