How weak is our apology for enduring moods, when we blame some person,
long since dead, for handing down to us an inheritance of megrims!
We need not accept such a legacy, though of course we must fight very
hard to resist its allurements. It may be convenient enough to censure
inheritance for this or that oddity. Our grandmothers had strange
moods,--spoke to people on some days and did not speak on other
days,--so we have diligently doubled our bequest, and have spells odder
yet,--find our friends quite delightful for a week or more, and then as
distasteful for a still longer time.
The patrimony of evil can be, and will be, shamefully increased with
every new generation, if good sense, sound principles, and a cheerful
heart do not constantly defend the right and strive to annihilate
inheritance. I am not going to discuss this matter of inheritance,
girls, for there is much in it not well for us to consider at present.
We are simply to remember to preserve and increase the good left us,
and fight to the utmost all evil that may have come from ancestry.
Every girl has peculiar forms of temptation; and what is hard for one
to resist is easy for another to repel, because to the latter it is
no temptation. If moods, grim moods, are worth any thing to us, they
are simply worth conquering,--merely valuable for the strength we get
from their defeat.
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