nt of the evil--that
they are sometimes heard from both parents? Now no serious observer of
human life and conduct can doubt that by every species of impure
language, whether in the form of hints, innuendoes, double entendres,
or plainer speech, impure thoughts are awakened, a licentious
imagination inflamed, and licentious purposes formed, which would
otherwise never have existed. Of all such things an inspired writer has
long ago said--and the language is still applicable;--'Let them not be
so much as named among you.'

I have been in families where these loose insinuations, and coarse
innuendoes were so common, that the presence of respectable company
scarcely operated as a restraint upon the unbridled tongues, even of
the parents! Many of these things had been repeated so often, and under
such circumstances that the children, at a very early age, perfectly
understood their meaning and import. Yet had these very same children
asked for direct information, at this time, on the subjects which had
been rendered familiar to them thus incidentally, the parents would
have startled; and would undoubtedly have repeated to them part of a
string of falsehoods, with which they had been in the habit of
attempting to 'cover up' these matters; though with the effect, in the
end, of rendering the children only so much the more curious and
inquisitive.

But this is not all. The filling of the juvenile mind, long before
nature brings the body to maturity, with impure imaginations, not only
preoccupies the ground which is greatly needed for something else, and
fills it with shoots of a noxious growth, but actually induces, if I
may so say, a _precocious maturity_. What I mean, is, that there arises
a morbid or diseased state of action of the vessels of the sexual
system, which paves the way for premature physical developement, and
greatly increases the danger of youthful irregularity.

[15] Pronounced _entaunders_.

5. EVENING PARTIES.

One prolific source of licentious feeling and action may be found, I
think, in evening parties, especially when protracted to a late hour.
It has always appeared to me that the injury to health which either
directly or indirectly grows out of evening parties, was a sufficient
objection to their recurrence, especially when the assembly is crowded,
the room greatly heated, or when music and dancing are the
accompaniments. Not a few young ladies, who after perspiring freely at
the latter exer