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IX.
on one's relationship to one's mother.
Those who recall the days when
Artemus Ward gave lectures may remember Low he glided from behind the curtain noiselessly, dressed in solemn black, looking like a juvenile undertaker, and proceeded without a smile to crack the gravest jokes over the head of his young pianist.
This tuneful youth, he explained, was paid five dollars a week “and his washing,” and he was thoroughly domestic in his style of playing, having even composed those touching melodies of home life, “Is it raining, mother dear, in
South Boston?”
and “Mother, you are one of my parents!”
Now, if there ever was anything that might be called a self-evident proposition, it is this last, and yet it is certain that from
Greek days to the present time the din of discussion has raged around it, and it has been habitually denied by large sections of the human race.
Indeed, it is very probable that practices now prevailing among the most enlightened nations-as, for instance, the transmission of the father's, not the mother's, family nameare
