8. A wife may be likened to a fruit tree, a child to its fruit. We all know that it is as impossible to have fine fruit from an unhealthy tree as to have a fine child from an unhealthy mother. In the one case, the tree either does not bear fruit at all—is barren—or it bears undersized, tasteless fruit,—fruit which often either immaturely drops from the tree, or, if plucked from the tree, is useless; in the other case, the wife either does not bear children—she is barren—or she has frequent miscarriages—“untimely fruit”—or she bears puny, sickly children, who often either drop into an early grave, or, if they live, probably drag out a miserable existence. You may as well expect “to gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles,” as healthy children from unhealthy parents!
9. Unhealthy parents, then, as a matter of course have unhealthy children; this is as truly the case as the night follows the day, and should deter both man and woman so circumstanced from marrying. There are numerous other complaints besides scrofula and insanity inherited and propagated by parents. It is a fearful responsibility, both to men and women, if they be not healthy, to marry. The result must, as a matter of course, be misery!
10. If a wife is to be healthy and strong, she must use the means—she must sow before she can reap; health will not come by merely wishing for it! The means are not always at first agreeable; but, like many other things, habit makes them so. Early rising, for instance, is not agreeable to the lazy, and to one fond of her bed; but it is essentially necessary to sound health. Exercise is not agreeable to the indolent; but no woman can be really strong without it. Thorough ablution of the whole body is distasteful and troublesome to one not accustomed to much washing—to one laboring under a kind of hydrophobia; but there is no perfect health without the daily cleansing of the whole skin.
11. But all these processes entail trouble. True: is anything in this world to be done without trouble? and is not the acquisition of precious health worth trouble? Yes, it is worth more than all our other acquisitions put together! Life without health is a burden; life with health is a joy and gladness! Up, then, and arouse yourself, and be doing! No time is to be lost if you wish to be well, to be a mother, and to be a mother of healthy children. The misfortune of it is, many ladies are more than half asleep, and are not aroused to danger till danger stares them in the face; they are not cognizant of ill health slowly creeping upon them, until, in too many cases, the time is gone by for relief, and ill health has become confirmed—has become a part and parcel of themselves; they do not lock the stable until the steed be stolen; they do not use the means until the means are of no avail:
“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to Heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.”[[1]]
12. Idleness is the mother of many diseases; she breeds them, feeds them, and fosters them, and is, moreover, a great enemy to fecundity. Idleness makes people miserable. I have heard a young girl—surrounded with every luxury—bemoan her lot, and complain that she was most unhappy in consequence of not having anything to do, and who wished that she had been a servant, so that she might have been obliged to work for her living. Idleness is certainly the hardest work in the world.
13. It frequently happens that a lady, surrounded with every luxury and every comfort, drags out a miserable existence; she cannot say that she ever, even for a single day, really feels well and strong. This is not to live—