We should all agree, if put to the vote, that a child has a right to
be well born. That was a trenchant speech of Henry Ward Beecher's on
the subject of being "born again;" that if he could be born right the
first time he'd take his chances on the second. "Hereditary rank,"
says Washington Irving, "may be a snare and a delusion, but hereditary
virtue is a patent of innate nobility which far outshines the blazonry
of heraldry."

Over the unborn our power is almost that of God, and our
responsibility, like His toward us; as we acquit ourselves toward
them, so let Him deal with us.

Why should we be astonished at the warped, cold, unhappy, suspicious
natures we see about us, when we reflect upon the number of
unwished-for, unwelcomed children in the world;--children who at
best were never loved until they were seen and known, and were often
grudged their being from the moment they began to be. I wonder if
sometimes a starved, crippled, agonized human body and soul does not
cry out, "Why, O man, O woman--why, being what I am, have you suffered
me to be?"

Physiologists and psychologists agree that the influences affecting
the child begin before birth. At what hour they begin, how far they
can be controlled, how far directed and modified, modern science is
not assured; but I imagine those months of preparation were given for
other reasons than that the cradle and the basket and the wardrobe
might be ready;--those long months of supreme patience, when the
life-germ is growing from unconscious to conscious being, and when a
host of mysterious influences and impulses are being carried silently
from mother to child. And if "beauty born of murmuring sound shall