ot be kept under lock and key. The physician is frequently
called upon to speak in plain language to his patients upon some
private and startling disease contracted on account of ignorance. The
better plan, however, is to so educate and enlighten old and young
upon the important subjects of health, so that the necessity to call a
physician may occur less frequently.

5. PROGRESSION.--A large, respectable, though diminishing class in
every community, maintain that nothing that relates exclusively to
either sex should become the subject of popular medical instruction.
But such an opinion is radically wrong; ignorance is no more the
mother of purity than it is of religion. Enlightenment can never work
injustice to him who investigates.

6. AN EXAMPLE.--The men and women who study and practice medicine are
not the worse, but the better for such knowledge; so it would be to
the community in general if all would be properly instructed on the
laws of health which relate to the sexes.

7. CRIME AND DEGRADATION.--Had every person a sound understanding on
the relation of the sexes, one of the most fertile sources of crime
and degradation would be removed. Physicians know too well what sad
consequences are constantly occurring from a lack of proper knowledge
on these important subjects.

8. A CONSISTENT CONSIDERATION.--Let the reader of this work study its
pages carefully and be able to give safe counsel and advice to others,
and remember that purity of purpose and purity of character are the
brightest jewels in the crown of immortality.

[Illustration: BEGINNING RIGHT.]

* * * * *

THE BEGINNING OF LIFE.

1. THE BEGINNING.--There is a charm in opening manhood which has
commended itself to the imagination in every age. The undefined hopes
and promises of the future--the dawning strength of intellect--the
vigorous flow of passion--the very exchange of home ties and protected
joys for free and manly pleasures, give to this period an interest and
excitement unfelt, perhaps, at any other.

2. THE GROWTH OF INDEPENDENCE.--Hitherto life has been to boys, as to
girls, a dependent existence--a sucker from the parent growth--a home
discipline of authority and guidance and communicated impulse. But
henceforth it is a transplanted growth of its own--a new and free
power of activity in which the mainspring is no longer authority or
law from without, but principle or opinion within. The shoot which