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kill them; because they won't let you; but I am sorry to say, some few
women teachers are killing off the future women. Again and again I have
heard it said by the girls: "We can get along all right with Mr. So and So;
we can get on the blind side of him all the time; we can fool him, but when
we try to get around Miss So and So she puts it to us awfully, and in the
neatest way, to get the work done." Now, why the women can't have a little
mercy on the younger people is something I cannot understand at all.

And yet, while I haven't said a word for the boy, ought we not to regard
him a little? Now and then there is the ambitious boy, and then again there
is your studious boy; there is your bookish boy; there is your shy boy who
does not get into the games. He is the boy you should watch all the time.
There is the boy who has become delicate and finicky, because he has been
doddled at home. I hope you haven't got so many of them here as we have in
the East, but he is here and you must watch him, because his parents are
doing everything in the world to spoil him. You must stand on the Lord's
side of him if you can, for these boys need your help. If you give a little
excess of mercy, a little bit more physical vigor gained by this regime of
open-air exercise and exercise between the school periods, you simply will
be erring on the safe side and doing good to that girl and such boys,
because on these years of metamorphosis depend the life and the happiness
of the girl and the boy.

Perhaps you are getting ready for examinations. I want to tell you Nature
has her examinations just as well as you do. Does not she examine the baby
and see that baby can't go on, and many babies do not go on. Then the death
rate sinks; at eleven and twelve it is very low, very low, indeed, only
perhaps two or three in a thousand, in many countries. Nature is giving
them a chance to see whether they will get ready for the second
examination. Right after or during puberty the death rate rises. At
eighteen, nineteen and twenty, it has gone up. That is Nature's second
examination, to see whether that boy or girl is fit to send out into the
world to take part in the great drama of life, and if she is conditioned at
this time, then it means invalidism for two, three, four, five years, and
if she is badly conditioned, it may mean death. When you are preparing
those girls for the examination, do not forget your own examination,
because it is coming on