Adella Hunt Logan

The boy takes his large nose from his grandmother, the small mouth from his
father, and a quick temper from his mother. This is natural, for children always
inherit the characteristics of their ancestors. But where does he get red hair? No
one in the family has hair of that color. And how is it that the young man seems
prone to the social sin? His father has always seemed upright, and his mother
is regarded as a model of purity. To be sure, the grandfather sowed wild oats, and
it is charged that a great-great-grandmother was born out of wedlock, but that
was generations ago and this young man has never heard those family scandals
of a hundred years past.

It is well if his ears have never listened to such unhappy stories. His parents
were wise in withholding them from his knowledge. Alas! while they could eas-
ily keep the family skeleton in the closet and spare their son the humiliation of
such ugly tales they could not so easily purify and change the blood that coursed
in their veins; hence we see the son in spite of fine precept and example, on the
downward grade in his social tendencies.

Again, they say this young man is not very strong. His mother fears he is
going into consumption. The father says: "Have no fears along that line, my
dear, for there is no consumption in my family nor in yours. No danger of that,
although somehow our son is rather frail!"

That red hair is hard to account for, but, no doubt, this head is an exact
reproduction of one in the same family generations ago. It may be so far back,
indeed, that no living person remembers having heard of the peculiarity. In the

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