HEREDITARY CURSES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 950, 2 July 1880, Page 3

HEREDITARY CURSES.

The second commandment enunciates a. natural law. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. Drunkenness is an inherited taint. Charles Ileade, in his new play of “Drink,” makes one of his characters thus denounce the man who has weakly yielded to'temptadon'at the solicitation of his fricn la :—“ Yon are following in the footsteps of your father and grandfather, who died drunkards. The hereditary curse of drink is on you, and through you it will fall on your innocent child. I have warned yen often. Men like you, with the inheritance of a drunkard’s blood in their veins, above all, must never touch one drop of brandy. It is not exhilaration, but maddening poison to you. Yield once, as you have now, and you cannot stop on your downward course. You barter your health, your strength, your manhood, the respect of your friends, your domestic happiness, your body and soul, to indulge in this vile degrading passion. You will teach your wife to drink also, and your child will be driven from home on to the streets. Day by day you will fall lower until at last, an outcast wretch, you will be found dead in the gutter, or will perish by your own hand.” These words are horribly true. I am no abstainer, but would always do my best to prevent these hereditary drunkards touching one drop of alcohol. It takes three or four generations for the curse to work out, oven as it is the accumulation of that space of time. Zola,- in bis last novel, “Xana,” shows hotv the daughter of the drunkard becomes K harlot, and depicts her life and death. It is repulsive-, but true ; there is no false glitter about it as in “La Dame aux Cornelias.”—“Circular Letters,” by the “Vagabond.”