imals more
highly endowed. It seems important to discuss this subject and understand
our social evils, as well as the intense passional desires of the sexes,
which must be controlled, or they lead to ruin.

3. SEXUAL PROPENSITIES are possessed by all, and these must be held in
abeyance, until they are needed for legitimate purposes. Hence parents
ought to understand the value to their children of mental and physical
labor, to elevate and strengthen the intellectual and moral faculties, to
develop the muscular system and direct the energies of the blood into
healthful channels. Vigorous employment of mind and body engrosses the
vital energies and diverts them from undue excitement of the sexual
desires.

_Give your young people plenty of outdoor amusement; less of dancing and
more of croquet and lawn tennis. Stimulate the methods of pure thoughts in
innocent amusement, and your sons and daughters will mature to manhood and
womanhood pure and chaste in character._ {401}

4. IGNORANCE DOES NOT MEAN INNOCENCE.--It is a current idea, especially
among our good common people, that the child should be kept in ignorance
regarding the mystery of his own body and how he was created or came into
the world. This is a great mistake. Parents must know that the sources of
social impurity are great, and the child is a hundred times more liable to
have his young mind poisoned if entirely ignorant of the functions of his
nature than if judiciously enlightened on these important truths by the
parent. The parent must give him weapons of defense against the putrid
corruption he is sure to meet outside the parental roof. The child cannot
get through the A, B, C period of school without it.

5. CONFLICTING VIEWS.--There is a great difference of opinion regarding the
age at which the child should be taught the mysteries of nature: some
maintain that he cannot comprehend the subject before the age of puberty;
others say "they will find it out soon enough, it is not best to have them
over-wise while they are so young. Wait a while." That is just the point
(_they will find it out_), and we ask in all candor, is it not better that
they learn it from the pure loving mother, untarnished from any insinuating
remark, than that they should learn it from some foul-mouthed libertine on
the street, or some giddy girl at school? Mothers! fathers! which think you
is the most sensible and fraught with the least danger to your darling boy
or girl?

6. DEL