ighly valued. There is no
liberty like that of a well-regulated home. To large numbers of young men
in business houses, home life is impracticable.
11. BE OF GOOD CHEER AND COURAGE.--Recovery will be gradual, and not
sudden; vital force is developed slowly from within. The object aimed at by
medicine and counsel is to aid and increase nervous and physical vigor, and
give tone to the demoralized system. Do not pay the slightest heed to the
exaggerated statements of the wretched quack doctors, who advertise
everywhere. Avoid them as you would a pestilence. Their great object is,
through exciting your fears, to get you into their clutches, in order to
oppress you with heavy and unjust payments. Be careful, not to indulge in
fancies, or morbid thoughts and feelings. Be hopeful, and play the part of
a man determined to overcome.
* * * * *
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Manhood Wrecked and Rescued.
1. THE NOBLEST FUNCTIONS OF MANHOOD.--The noblest functions of manhood are
brought into action in the office of the parent. It is here that man
assumes the prerogative of a God and becomes a creator. How essential that
every function of his physical system should be perfect, and every faculty
of his mind free from that which would degrade; yet how many drag their
purity through the filth of masturbation, revel in the orgies of the
debauchee, and worship at the shrine of the prostitute, until, like a tree
blighted by the livid lightning, they stand with all their outward form of
men, but without life.
2. THRESHOLD OF HONOR.--Think of a man like that; in whom the passions and
vices have burned themselves out, putting on the airs of a saint and
claiming to have reformed! Aye, reformed, when there is no longer sweetness
in the indulgence of lust. Think of such loathsome bestiality, dragging its
slimy body across the threshold of honor and nobility and asking a pure
woman, with the love-light of heaven in her eyes, to pass her days with
him; to accept him as her lord; to be satisfied with the burnt-out,
shriveled forces of manhood left; to sacrifice her purity that he may be
redeemed, and to respect in a husband what she would despise in the brute.
3. STOP.--If you are, then, on the highway to this state of degradation,
stop. If already you have sounded the depths of lost manhood, then turn,
and from the fountain of life regain your power, before you perpetrate the
terrible crime of marriage, thus wrecking a woman'
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