The word kleptomania is used to indicate the habit of stealing, by those persons with whom wealth precludes the ordinary temptation to the act. Certain women of position are regularly watched by clerks in stores because they are known to carry off laces, ribbons, etc., when they fancy themselves unobserved. Such women have very inferior minds independent of this one vice. In the mother of such an one the desire to get and to keep things of material value, must have been exceedingly prominent. Many an honest mother mourns over the unscrupulous dishonesty of her son, while all unwittingly she conveyed to him the overpowering impulse; or there was not rigid probity enough in her own life to overrule the dishonest tendency conveyed by her husband.
In the first case, her desire to get and to keep would be harmless and justifiable as a temporary state of mind, if she were not pregnant. She knows, although she does not often dwell on the fact, that she is working assiduously for legitimate ends. But as she is, in truth, mainly engrossed in getting and saving, thus using a very limited part of her mind, she does the harm. The selfish, grasping spirit increases on itself through generations of similar experience. On the same principle, the remarkable singer is the product of two or three generations of love of song.
A childish inclination to appropriate that which belongs to another, yields readily to wise treatment, where the intellect, the nature, is not cramped and dull.
[SPECULATIVE INTELLECT.]
The habit of reasoning independently, of investigating without reference to authority, is by no means a common one. Most people have their thinking done for them, and are content to quote their clergyman, their doctor, or their great-grandmother, as the case may require. We say a man or woman is “original” when they seek Truth wherever she may be found, regardless of popular opinion.
My friend, though quite practical, loved dearly to wander in the higher regions of thought. Such an one is apt to suffer for the want of sympathy, and situated as she was in an obscure inland town, where living literature was unappreciated and congenial companionship did not exist, her first year of married life was not all that she had anticipated. Her husband was “all business,” but he wanted his wife to be happy, and he induced her to send for an old schoolmate “for company.”
After Miss Wood’s arrival there was no time for morbid regrets or dissatisfaction. She brought a year’s later news of the old circle of friends, was full of piquant personal reminiscence, could discuss the merits of the latest noteworthy literature, and entered heartily into the political reform movements of England and Italy. The days were now only too short for the duties and sympathy that had to be crowded into them.
After the birth of Mrs. Roche’s first child her friend married, and moved on to a farm some miles away. Mrs. R. had more domestic occupation, but a close communication was kept up. Then the anti-slavery agitation was beginning to be felt all over the country, and Mr. R., to his wife’s great delight, flung himself with all his compact executive energy into it. During this period another child, a girl, was born. Suddenly and unexpectedly business losses occurred, which obliged a removal to a new place.
“It so happened,” said Mrs. R., referring long years later to the marked difference in her children, “that the months before Cecil’s birth, I met with no book or person that appealed to me, and I was always so helplessly dependent on outside influences when I was enciente. The dear boy, in his early youth, gave evidence of the absence of the speculative intellect. He hates discussion and theories of every sort. Philosophy is his abomination. The day is good enough for him without analysis. He likes a fine poem, and adores Ruskin, and his order and system make him invaluable to his father. But in comprehensiveness, in capacity for ideas, he ranks far below his brother and his sister.”