Part 4

It would be well if the unmarried would visit asylums where idiots and inebriates bear testimony to their ante-natal conditions.

OVER-EXERTION.

Over-exertion during pregnancy is almost as hurtful as indolence, depriving the unborn of those vital forces necessary to a well-constituted existence.

In no country called civilized does the pregnant woman overtax her strength as she does in these United States. This fact is quite sufficient to account for the very general want of robustness, vigor, and firm health, especially among our women. I refer here principally to our farmers’ and mechanics’ wives.

The farmer’s brood mare is carefully considered. She is exercised gently lest her progeny suffer deterioration. But the farmer’s wife, the mother of his progeny, who are to do him honor by their virtues, or cast reproach upon him by their mediocrity or vices, is over-worked every day of each of the nine months of each period that is to decide his case.

When the mare has performed the labor that is good for her, she is turned into the sunny pasture for the rest of the day. But there is no considerate arrangement for the wife’s walking in green meadows to drink in the beauties of nature, and absorb the invigorating sunlight when she has had as much exercise as is good for her. She cooks and scours, washes and irons, makes and mends, churns, quilts, makes preserves, pickles, rag mats, washes dishes three times a day, saves and contrives (than which nothing is so wearing on the mind), attends the meetings of her religious society, helping at their fairs and socials; it is probable she takes a boarder or two in the summer, keeps up a limited correspondence with her family, and goes to bed every night so exhausted of her forces, that sleep has to be waited for, rising unrested to begin over again the dreary daily routine.

You say she has wonderful energy and ability. But why does she not give her children the benefit of her ambition and faculty? She put all the vitality, all the magnetism that belonged to her little daughter, into the kettles and pans, into the soap and butter. The butter may sell well in the market, but it will not atone for the absence of resource in her child.

Her boys are slow to apprehend, and will never aspire beyond the three R’s. They lounge instead of sitting, and walk without dignity.

The girls lack stamina, and have not their mother’s ambition to “put the work through.” Poor things! They do not know that they were born tired, or they would offer that as an excuse. They are lacking in the magnetism that attracts, in the hopefulness and health that makes every day a satisfaction.

If the husband, on his farm, or in his factory, or store, has extra or increasing work, he forthwith hires more help; but as child after child add to the responsibilities and labors of the home, the mother struggles on unassisted, until at last she becomes a hopeless invalid, or sinks at middle age under her burdens, leaving her husband with his accumulated means to marry a younger woman, who sits in the parlor, hires plenty of servants--now considered quite necessary--and has a good time generally, on the savings of her predecessor.

It is the conscientious, self-sacrificing woman who thus wears her life out so unnecessarily. She thinks it her duty. Her husband’s labor has profits attending it--hers, none. Most fatal mistake! Her maternal office was her first and highest. If she filled that well, she did a more important and profitable work than any that could fall to her husband. And it is plain enough that when such domestic services as hers have to be hired, they have a very decided money value.

As an illustration of the dangers of over-work, I will cite the case of a boy born of well-to-do parents in ---- County, Kentucky. There were several children older and one younger than the lad in question. This youngest boy had a brain of the very best calibre. Talent, latent energy, and determination were written in every line of the child’s face. “He has the will of a Napoleon,” said his father, and this was true.

This and other illustrations are with the names of persons and places simply changed.

The brother of whom I would speak was five years the senior of master Jefferson, a boy with a very large head, lack-lustre eyes, and a mixture of amiability and apathy in his air and manner. He relished neither work, or study, or play. I boarded in the family, and had ample opportunity for exact observation of the very different characters composing it. The parents were unusually rugged and hearty, and the children, with this one exception, took after them.

When, by careful steps, I led the mother back to the summer preceding dull Charley’s birth, she was able to recall quite vividly the circumstances that had surrounded her, and the kind of life she led.

“Had she,” I asked, “been unhappy?”

“Oh, dear no; she had had nothing to be unhappy about.”

“Was she sick during any part of her pregnancy? Had she felt her condition a greater tax on her powers than was usual with her?”

“No; on the contrary, she had been filled with ambition.”

Her husband’s mother was making her first visit with them, and she was anxious to prove to her how good and “smart” a woman her son had married. Business had taken her husband away from home (he was a horse and cattle trader, and was often absent months at a time), and she had desired to surprise him on his return by all she had accomplished.

“Why, you would hardly believe it if I should tell you all I compassed that summer before Charley was born. I wove a whole piece of butternut, and made my husband a complete suit--a new one for Johnny, too. I put up sweet pickles, and preserves, and apple butter enough to last more than a year. We only had Aunt ’Liza and that lazy, fat Tish in the kitchen, and Jake for out-doors, and Aunt ’Liza wasn’t much account that summer, for she had her little Ben a month before Charley came. But nothing seemed to trouble me. Husband wrote that he was doing right well, and every time put in some nice words for me, and how he longed to see us all. So I worked and worked. I remember how tired I was when night came. I was always accounted a sound sleeper, but that summer I could not sleep. I heard the big clock in the entry strike one and two half the time.”

Here, you see, the mother’s activity gave the large head, while what should have filled it with compact brain went into the butternut and preserves.

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I have known women stand at the ironing-table ready to drop with fatigue, while they smoothed out the last crease from the kitchen towel.

It is a growing custom to embroider under-garments, night-dresses, etc. Such work is extremely fascinating, and women who can not afford to purchase it, will often allow themselves to stitch far into the night. This tends to make a child narrow-chested and short-sighted, and is unfavorable to good looks, and the embroidered garments do not make it as attractive as would a serene and sunny disposition. Grace is said to depend on excess of power. Insufficiency of power precludes this quality, which is even more fascinating than beauty itself.

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There are, unfortunately, among all classes, women who can not, or do not, extend their thoughts beyond the trimming on their skirts, or the last small scandal. Alas! for the high-minded, true-hearted man who unites his destiny with one of these. Her aims are paltry, and his fine traits in her keeping are changed to littleness. She clings to her petty interests, and he can no more inspire her with larger views than he can mould a marble image. She represents herself in her children. His descendants through her progress backward, and he is obliged to admit that woman has the greater power in the formation of character.

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