| FIRST TABLE. | |
|---|---|
| CHILDREN | |
| First generation (emigrated 1629) | 9 |
| Second generation | 7 |
| Third generation | 7 |
| Fourth generation | 8 |
| Fifth generation | 7 |
| Sixth generation | 10 |
| Average | 8 |
| SECOND TABLE. | |
|---|---|
| CHILDREN | |
| First generation (emigrated 1636) | 10 |
| Second generation | 7 |
| Third generation | 14 |
| Fourth generation | 7 |
| Fifth generation | 6 |
| Sixth generation | 4 |
| Seventh generation | 10 |
| Average | 8.29 |
It will be seen that the last generation exhibits the largest family in the first line, and almost the largest—much beyond the average—in the other.
Now, when we consider the great change in all the habits of living, since the Puritan days, and all the vicissitudes to which a single line is exposed,—a whole household being sometimes destroyed by a single hereditary disease,—this is certainly a fair exhibit. These two genealogies were taken at random, because they happened to be nearest at hand. But I suspect any extended examination of genealogies, either of the Puritan families of New England, or the Dutch families of New York, would show much the same result. Some of the descendants of the old Stuyvesant race, for instance, exhibit in this generation a physical vigor which it is impossible that the doughty governor himself could have surpassed.
There are undoubtedly many moral and physiological sins committed, tending to shorten and weaken life; but the progress of knowledge more than counterbalances them. No man of middle age can look at a class of students from our older colleges without seeing them to be physically superior to the same number of college boys taken twenty-five years ago. The organization of girls being far more delicate and complicated, the same reform reaches them more promptly, but it reaches them at last. The little girls of the present day eat better food, wear more healthful clothing, and breathe more fresh air, than their mothers did. The introduction of india-rubber boots and waterproof cloaks alone has given a fresh lease of life to multitudes of women, who otherwise would have been kept housed whenever there was so much as a sprinkling of rain.
It is desirable, certainly, to venerate our grandmothers; but I am inclined to think, on the whole, that their great-granddaughters will be the best.
VII.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR GRANDMOTHERS.
Every young woman of the present generation, so soon as she ventures to have a headache or a set of nerves, is immediately confronted by indignant critics with her grandmother. If the grandmother is living, the fact of her existence is appealed to: if there is only a departed grandmother to remember, the maiden is confronted with a ghost. That ghost is endowed with as many excellences as those with which Miss Betsey Trotwood endowed the niece that never had been born; and, as David Copperfield was reproached with the virtues of his unborn sister who “would never have run away,” so that granddaughter with the headache is reproached with the ghostly perfections of her grandmother, who never had a headache—or, if she had, it is luckily forgotten. It is necessary to ask, sometimes, what was really the truth about our grandmothers? Were they such models of bodily perfection as is usually claimed?
If we look at the early colonial days, we are at once met by the fact, that although families were then often larger than is now common, yet this phenomenon was by no means universal, and was balanced by a good many childless homes. Of this any one can satisfy himself by looking over any family history; and he can also satisfy himself of the fact,—first pointed out, I believe, by Mrs. Dall,—that third and fourth marriages were then obviously and unquestionably more common than now. The inference would seem to be, that there is a little illusion about the health of those days, as there is about the health of savage races. In both cases, it is not so much that the average health is greater under less highly civilized conditions, but that these conditions kill off the weak, and leave only the strong. Modern civilized society, on the other hand, preserves the health of many men and women—and permits them to marry, and become parents—who under, the severities of savage life or of pioneer life would have died, and given way to others.
On this I will not dwell; because these good ladies were not strictly our grandmothers, being farther removed. But of those who were our grandmothers,—the women of the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary epochs,—we happen to have very definite physiological observations recorded; not very flattering, it is true, but frank and searching. What these good women are in the imagination of their descendants, we know. Mrs. Stowe describes them as “the race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls that used to grow up in country places, and made the bright, neat New England kitchens of olden times;” and adds, “This race of women, pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and in their stead come the fragile, easily-fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant of common things.”