As his
mother could have but her interest on the third of the value of the
estate, unless specially provided for by marriage settlement, she
necessarily became dependent upon him who inherited the estate; and
therefore the lad, even while a lad, was constantly deferred to, until
he deemed himself superior to the rest of his family. The elder members
of a family might have been girls, and, there being no boys, might have
arrived at the conclusion that the property of their father might be
theirs; but a boy born late in the life of their father would sweep away
the delusion, and leave them to poverty. Eldest sons have been known to
send their brothers and sisters out into the world penniless, and sell
from over their mothers' heads the homes in which they had hoped to
die, obliging them to subsist or starve, as they might, upon their
meagre "thirds." Whether justice to mother or children was done or not,
depended entirely upon this one boy. And this was the brightest side of
primogeniture. In cases of entailed property, very often the entail
specified that it was to go to the heir male for all time. A father in
this case, dying without a son, could do nothing besides willing to
these girls such loose property as he might have acquired independently
of his estate. It might revert to his daughter's most bitter enemy; it
was not in his power to help it.
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