Editorial note — IX HEREDITY, PHYSICAL DISEASE, AND MORAL WEAKNESS

[Footnote 3: The present conditions that obtain with regard to the celebration of marriages are very prone to have a certain amount of intoxication as their result. Perhaps, then, it is a fortunate thing, as has often been said, that the first child is not born until some considerable time after it might normally be expected. It has been said more than once, however, that first children are a little more likely to have certain degenerative defects than are others, and a connection has been found between certain abuses of stimulants and incidental exhaustion to account for this. One of the most amusing things to Li Hung Chang, on his travels through our country, was the curious publicity we give to everything connected with marriage, while presumably our Christian ideas should rather counsel a veiling of the mysteries, religious and physical, connected with it. Certain it is that the present tendency towards farewell dinners at clubs, and other festivities of various kinds, are not at all likely to result in benefit to the presumably hoped-for offspring.]