timulate functions just coming into existence,
and pre-eminently needing to be let alone on their own plane to mature
quietly and unconsciously. Thus dwelt upon and stimulated, these
functions become in a measure disordered and a source of miserable
temptation and difficulty, even if no actual wrong-doing results. If you
only knew what those struggles are, if you only knew what miserable
chains are forged in utter helpless ignorance, you would not let any
sense of difficulty or shrinking timidity make you refuse to give your
boy the higher teaching which would have saved him.

It is told of the beautiful Countess of Dufferin, by her son and
biographer, Lord Dufferin, that when the surgeons were consulting round
her bedside which they should save--the mother or the child--she
exclaimed, "Oh, never mind me; save my baby!" If you knew the facts as I
know them, I am quite sure you would exclaim, in the face of any
difficulties, any natural shrinking on your part, "Oh, never mind me,
let me save my boys!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: _The Study of Sociology_, by Herbert Spencer (International
Scientific Series), p. 270, fifth edition, 1876.]

[Footnote 6: I quote here at some length from a White Cross paper called
_Per Augusta ad Augusta_, in which I summarized and applied Dr.
Martineau's teaching, as I do not think I can do it more clearly or in
more condensed form. By some mistake it came out, not under my name, but
under the initials of the writer of _True Manliness_ and several others
of the White Cross Series. I only mention the mistake now to safeguard
my own intellectual honesty.]

[Footnote 7: _Hours of Thought_, by Dr. Martineau, vol. i., p. 35, third
edition.]

CHAPTER V

EARLY BOYHOOD

Having now laid down the general principles which we have to recognize
in the moral training of the young, let me endeavor to make some
practical suggestions how these principles may be carried out,
suggestions which, as a matter of fact, I have found to be helpful to
educated mothers in the great and responsible task of training the men
of the future generation.

All I would earnestly ask you to remember is, that in offering these
suggestions I am in no way venturing to dictate to you, only endeavoring
to place a wide experience at your service. Doubtless you will often
modify and, in some cases, very possibly reverse my conclusions. All I
ask is that you should weigh them thoughtfully and prayerfully and with
an