eless, the ambitions and
ideals of a boy at adolescence are high. He will fight to be clean if he
understands that clean living means the acquisition of strength. He would
rather have virility than anything else in the world.

As to method, let us deal with the boy as a creature with reason. The best
plan is to place before boys a standard of virile manhood, and then to
show how such a standard may be met by clean living. Real characters who
have achieved high standards of vigor should be shown as heroes worthy of
imitation. Lincoln is known by most adolescent boys to have been a man of
great physical strength. He was "a man without vices, even in his youth,
but full even in ripe age of the sap of virility."[53] The effect of
clean living upon nations may also be spoken of. Charles Kingsley writes
of the Teuton:[54]--

It was not the mere muscle of the Teuton which enabled him to crush
the decrepit and debauched slave nations.... It had given him more,
that purity of his: it had given him, as it may give you, gentlemen, a
calm and steady brain, and a free and loyal heart; the energy which
comes from self-restraint; and the spirit which shrinks from neither
God nor man, and feels it light to die for wife and child, for people
and for Queen.

Because thousands of our boys are now growing into manhood who will never
receive the advantages of such a plan as we hope will be worked out during
the next decade,--boys who are now at the danger point,--an emergency
exists that must be met in the best way possible. For these boys, we are
now forced to give single talks or short series of talks. Just what facts
should be mentioned in a talk to any particular group of boys is a matter
which must always be governed by the age, development, and environment of
the boys concerned.

The first task for a teacher or a speaker giving a single lesson or a
series of lessons is to set up a high standard of manhood. The lessons may
concern the development and the conservation of virility. The teacher may
explain that virility means not only muscular strength but endurance,
energy, will power, and courage; and that in addition to these, a true man
has chivalry,--he is concerned for the welfare of others, especially for
the safety of women and children. He must possess more than physical
prowess; he must possess human virtues or he is no better than a brute.
The need for the conservation of virility in the race as w