"Certainly there is. It is a danger which you must watch in educating the child. He may inherit a tendency to drink: guard against it by keeping him from alcohol of any kind. He may show physical weakness; watch him carefully. But nine-tenths of so-called hereditary disease or vice are due to example and conditions of life."
"If we do not know the character of the parents—they may be criminals. What if the child should inherit these instincts?"
The doctor, who had been standing, took a chair, and prepared himself to argue the point. He was a young man, with a strong jaw and a square forehead. He had a face and features of rude but vigorous handling; such a face as a noble life would make beautiful in age, and an ignoble life would make hideous. Every man has as many faces as there are years of his life, and we heed them not; yet each follows each in a long procession, ending with the pale and waxen face in the coffin—that solemn face which tells so much.
"There is," he said, "a good deal of loose talk about heredity. Some things external are hereditary—face, eyes, figure, stature, hands, certainly descend from father to son; some diseases, especially those of the nervous kind; some forms of taste and aptitude, especially those which are artistic. Things which are not natural, but acquired, are never hereditary—never. If the boy's father is the greatest criminal in the country, it won't hurt him a bit, because he is taken away too early to have observed or imitated. The sons are said to take after the mothers; that is, perhaps, because they have always got the models before them. In your case, you will naturally become the child's most important model. Later on, will come in the male influence. If there is, for instance, a putative father——"
"There will be, of course, my husband."
The doctor bowed again. Then there was a husband living. "He will become the boy's second model," he said. "In other words, madam, the vices of the boy's parents—if they have vices—will not affect him in the least. Gout, rheumatism, asthma, consumption,—all these things, and many more, a child may inherit; but acquired criminality, never. Be quite easy on that point."
"My desire is that the child may become as perfect a gentleman at all points as his—as my husband."
"Why should he not? He has no past to drag him down. You will train him and mould him as you please—exactly as you please."
"You have not told me anything about the mother, except that she is in want."
"Why should you learn her name, or she yours?"