vitiated blood courses through his stricken body, it will be because his
mind is too weak to reason from effect to cause or because his
affliction has taught him large charity. He will feel that he has been
shamefully cheated in the great game of life, with no hope of
restitution. By reason of this, his gaze is turned backward instead of
forward, and this is a reversal of the rightful attitude of child life.
Instead of looking forward with hope and happiness, he droops through a
somber life and constantly broods upon what might have been.

=Attitude of ancestors.=--Whether he realizes it or not, he reduces the
average of humanity and is a burden upon society both in a negative and
in a positive sense. In him society loses a worker and gains a
dependent. Every taxpayer of the community must contribute to the
support which he is unable to provide for himself. He watches other
children romp and play and laugh; but he neither romps, nor plays, nor
laughs. He is inert. Some ancestor chained him to the rock, and the
vultures of disease and unhappiness are feeding at his vitals. He asks
for bread, and they give him a stone; he asks for life, and they give
him a living death; he asks for a heaven of delight, and they give him a
hell of despair. He has a right to freedom, but, in place of that, he is
forced into slavery of body and soul to pay the debts of his
grandfather. Nor can he pay these debts in full, but must, perforce,
pass them on to his own children. Sad to relate, the father and
grandfather look upon such a child and charge Providence with unjust
dealing in burdening them with such an imperfect scion to uphold the
family name. They seem blind to the patent truth before them; they seem
unable to interpret the law of cause and effect; they charge the
Almighty and the child with their own defections; they acquit themselves
of any responsibility for what is before their eyes.