32
A Solemn Appeal
has been compelled to needless suffering, her constitution has failed,
and her intellect has become weakened, by so great a draught upon
her vital resources. Her offspring suffer her debility, and thus a class
is thrown upon society, poorly fitted, through the mother’s inability to
educate them, to be of the least benefit.
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If these mothers had given birth to but few children, and if they had
been careful to live upon such food as would preserve physical health
and mental strength, so that the moral and intellectual might predomi-
nate over the animal, they could have so educated their children for
usefulness, as to have made them bright ornaments to society.
If parents in past generations had, with firmness of purpose, kept
the body servant to the mind, and had not allowed the intellectual to
be enslaved by animal passions, there would be in this age a different
order of beings upon the earth. And if the mother, before the birth of
her offspring, had always possessed self-control, realizing that she was
giving the stamp of character to future generations, the present state of
society would not be so depreciated in character as at the present time.
Every woman about to become a mother, whatever may be her sur-
roundings, should encourage constantly a happy, cheerful, contented
disposition, knowing that for all her efforts in this direction she will
be repaid tenfold in the physical, as well as the moral, character of
her offspring. Nor is this all. She can, by habit, accustom herself to
cheerful thinking, and thus encourage a happy state of mind, and cast
a cheerful reflection of her own happiness of spirit upon her family,
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and those with whom she associates. And in a very great degree will
her physical health be improved. A force will be imparted to the life
springs, the blood will not move sluggishly, as would be the case if she
were to yield to despondency and gloom. Her mental and moral health
are invigorated by the buoyancy of her spirits. The power of the will
can resist impressions of the mind, and will prove a grand soother of
the nerves. Children who are robbed of that vitality which they should
have inherited of their parents, should have the utmost care. By close
attention to the laws of their being, a much better condition of things
can be established.
The period during which the infant receives its nourishment from
the mother, is a critical one. Many mothers, while nursing their infants,
have been permitted to overlabor, and to heat their blood in cooking,
and the nursling has been seriously affected, not only with fevered