“You think there is more in a child’s associations and home training in determining its character than in its parentage?”
“My experience of children I have seen grow into men certainly points to that conclusion. But it is a somewhat difficult subject on which to gather reliable data, for in nine cases out of ten the child’s parents are inculcating their own ideas of right and wrong into their youngster during the years its expanding brain is most sensitive to permanent impressions. What an ordinary observer might put down to hereditary characteristics of the individual, may thus merely be due to tuition and example.”
“You think the guardians of youngsters, then, more responsible for their children’s sins than is generally supposed?”
“Well, the young of well-bred men and animals—I mean by that of parents whose ancestors have long been trained in and for certain purposes and habits—have possibly less inclination to revert to the original or wild type; but what a lady friend of mine in Auckland said to me once upon a case in point very well expresses my opinions. This lady told me that the mother of Hall called upon her once, bringing the afterward notorious poisoner with her, he being then a child. The youngster was a very spoilt child, and made a great disturbance at first; but by-and-by he became quiet, and left the room where the ladies were seated, to the great relief of both of them. Presently, on Mrs. Hall leaving, the two ladies went to look for the boy, and found him sitting on the lawn quietly watching the agonies of my friend’s ‘harmless, necessary cat,’ all of whose paws he had carefully disarticulated with a small axe. My lady friend in telling me the incident said, ‘I was very shocked, of course, but I can’t say I was very surprised, for he was a thoroughly spoilt boy, and allowed to follow his own inclinations entirely; any child almost would become bad and cruel under those circumstances.’ I believe, on the whole, she was right in her reasoning.”
“And does this murdering of natives still go on, doctor? I can’t really get my mind to believe it?”
“Come here, Angland, to the light from the captain’s cabin, and read this.”
The doctor hereupon takes a South Queensland newspaper from his pockets. Claude reads as follows in the _Thargomindah Herald_, of date May 30th, 1889: