ing them this debasing practice.

4. Thousands of youths and young men have only to use the looking-glass to
see the portrait of one guilty of this loathsome sin. The effects are
plainly discernible in the boy's appearance. The face and hands become pale
and bloodless. The eye is destitute of its natural fire and lustre. The
flesh is soft and flabby, the muscles limp and lacking healthy firmness. In
cases where the habit has become confirmed, and where the system has been
drained of this vital force, it is seen in positive ugliness, in a pale and
cadaverous appearance, slovenly gait, slouching walk, and an impaired
memory.

5. It is obvious that if the most vital physical force of a boy's life is
being spent through this degrading habit--a habit, be it observed, of rapid
growth, great strength, and difficult to break--he must develop badly. In
thousands of cases the result is seen in a low stature, contracted chest,
weak lungs, and liability to sore throat. Tendency to cold, indigestion,
depression, drowsiness, and idleness, are results distinctly traceable to
this deadly practice. Pallor of countenance, nervous and rheumatic
affections, loss of memory, epilepsy, paralysis, and insanity find their
principal predisposing cause in the same shameful waste of life. The want
of moral force and strength of mind often observable is youths and young
men is largely induced by this destructive and deadly sin.

6. Large numbers of youths pass from an exhausted boyhood into the
weakness, intermittent fevers, and consumption, which are said to carry off
so many. If the deaths were attributed primarily to loss of strength
occasioned by self-pollution, it would be much nearer the truth. It is
monstrous to suppose that a boy who comes from healthy parents should
decline and die. Without a shade of doubt the chief cause of decay and
death amongst youths and young men, is to be traced to this baneful habit.
{439}

7. It is a well-known fact that any man who desires to excel and retain his
excellence as an accurate shot, an oarsman, a pedestrian, a pugilist, a
first-class cricketer, bicyclist, student, artist, or literary man, must
abstain from self-pollution and fornication. Thousands of school boys and
students lose their positions in the class, and are plucked at the time of
their examination by reason of failure of memory, through lack of nerve and
vital force, caused mainly by draining the physical frame of the seed which
is the v