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Elizabeth S. Kite
Field Worker New Jersey Training School For Backward and Feeble-Minded Vineland, N.J.

During the early days of the last century, two half brothers having had the same father but different mothers began their respective careers in one of our older states. Nothing could have been more widely divergent than the social standing, the mental endowment, the material possessions of the two brothers, who none the less in physical feature bore a striking resemblance to each other.

One of them, the inheritor of the homestead farm, whose broad acres overlooked a lordly river, was a man respected by all who knew him, intelligent, well married, with children who in themselves or in their descendants would cast nothing but honor upon the family name. The other, feeble-minded and morally repulsive, lived on a mountain-side in a hut built of rock fragments so loosely put together that more than once the roof slid from the walls. For a quarter of a century this hut existed as a hotbed of vice, the resort of the debauched youth of the neighborhood, and from its walls has come a race of degenerates which, out of a total of four hundred and eighty descendants, numbers in alms-house cases, in keepers of houses of prostitution, in inmates of reformatories and institutions for the feeble-minded, in criminals of various sorts and in feeble-minded not under state protection, 143 souls!

And yet the progenitor of this social evil gave in early manhood hopes of something better. The freshness of youth hid the degenerate tendency that was soon to assert itself. He married a young woman of decent family and the two together saved a few dollars with which they bought an acre and a half of uncleared ground. Here they built their hut and here began to appear, in quick succession, the offspring of the pair, who almost as quickly were bound out among the neighboring farms. Twice, during the next few years, the couple added to their initial plot of ground, for the county records show that once a half-acre was purchased for five dollars, and again two-thirds of an acre for eight dollars. From this date no gleam of ambition illumes the dark way the couple were going, and it was not long before the wife, poorly nourished, overworked, and scantily clad, succumbed to the inevitable, dying with the thirteenth child.

Left to himself the husband lived on, much as he had lived before -- avoiding work perhaps a little more effectively, drinking perhaps a little heavier. His wife's family had moved to Cincinnati, where they had prospered, and during her life-time offered to pay the price of transportation if the couple would join them, but this along with other inducements had been set aside by the husband, who had neither the mind nor the will to grasp the opportunity offered him. As time went on, the grosser elements of his nature gained ascendancy, which, added to habitual filth, made him a most repulsive person, so that he merited the name bestowed upon him of the "Old Horror." At election time he was a well-known figure. Then he would appear dressed in a suit of cast-off clothes given him for the occasion, very conscious of the ephemeral importance which his power as a citizen gave him. It was well known that his vote was the possession of any one who would give him a drink, and there was no lack of men ready to make the bargain. But with all this, his utter inoffensiveness, coupled with a genuinely kind heart, characteristic of the family, won for him a sort of protecting pity in the vicinity. Many an old farmer would allow him to sit on the porch and draw off, unnoticed, measure after measure of cider from the barrel which was always in evidence. When the old fellow had taken so much that he lost his balance and rolled off, the farmer would chuckle -- "Well, well, I do declare! Them steps of mine does need fixin'!" -- at which the simple-minded neighbor would gather himself together, really believing the steps had caused his fall!

After the death of their mother, three of this man's daughters subsequently known as "Old Mol," "Old Jane," and "Old Kate," came back to their father and either settled near or lived with him. It was then that the crude hut, hidden deep in the mountain thicket, became known in the neighborhood. Memories of the scandals that now and then leaked out, involving the names of sons of prominent citizens, are still in the minds of many living persons, although the perpetrators of the deeds have long since passed to their reward, leaving behind them a long train of descendants, many of whom now may be found among such water-logged humanity as settles at the bottom of our big cities, or remain in their native hills and continue to carry on the work of their progenitors.

How different the story of the other half-brother! In his case there is a clear normal line of intelligent citizens, who in their varied activities have constantly tended to increase the preserving force of our commonwealth, lifting its energies to an ever broadening outlook.