tending toward deterioration. The commandment to the modern woman is now
not simply "Thou shalt bear," but rather, "Thou shalt not bear in excess of
thy power to rear and train satisfactorily;" and the woman who should today
appear at the door of a workhouse or the tribunal of the poor-law guardians
followed by her twelve infants, demanding honourable sustenance for them
and herself in return for the labour she had undergone in producing them,
would meet with but short shrift. And the modern man who on his wedding-
day should be greeted with the ancient good wish, that he might become the
father of twenty sons and twenty daughters, would regard it as a
malediction rather than a blessing. It is certain that the time is now
rapidly approaching when child-bearing will be regarded rather as a lofty
privilege, permissible only to those who have shown their power rightly to
train and provide for their offspring, than a labour which in itself, and
under whatever conditions performed, is beneficial to society. (The
difference between the primitive and modern view on this matter is aptly
and quaintly illustrated by two incidents. Seeing a certain Bantu woman
who appeared better cared for, less hard worked, and happier than the mass
of her companions, we made inquiry, and found that she had two impotent
brothers; because of this she herself had not married, but had borne by
different men fourteen children, all of whom when grown she had given to
her brothers. "They are fond of me because I have given them so many
children, therefore I have not to work like the other women; and my
brothers give me plenty of mealies and milk," she replied, complacently,
when questioned, "and our family will not die out." And this person, whose
conduct was so emphatically anti-social on all sides when viewed from the
modern standpoint, was evidently regarded as pre-eminently of value to her
family and to society because of her mere fecundity. On the other hand, a
few weeks back appeared an account in the London papers of an individual
who, taken up at the East End for some brutal offence, blubbered out in
court that she was the mother of twenty children. "You should be ashamed