boy and the girl must learn and know all about it. That is one thing
they are determined to do at the outset. The boy girds up his loins and he
goes whither he will. He must taste of every experience for himself. He
will meet joy and sorrow with the same frolicking, welcoming spirit. He has
never been saddened by experience nor disillusioned by disappointment and
failure. He will try all the knowledge of good and evil if it costs him
Paradise.

Nature is loosening every leading string now and is getting him free to
complete his own individual development and to forge his own character. We
cannot stop him if we would. It is very lucky that we cannot. It is better
that we should not stop him even if we could; nevertheless, he has very
little self-knowledge and still less self-control. Impulses well up from
changes going on within him or from stimuli which come to him from without.
He does not understand them. He does not know where they come from. He does
not know what they mean. He is ill-prepared to face them, and now he goes
one way and now the other. He has just about as clear a conception of the
value of time as a child has. He has not outgrown childhood in that
respect. He cannot possibly play a waiting game. That is the last thing
that he can do. If the sun shines to-day it is always going to be bright
weather. If the maiden of his adoration frowns to-day, the sun will never
shine again. He is either on the Delectable Mountain or in the Valley of
Humiliation, and he is far more frequently in the latter than we think. He
is rarely between the two, and he is not going to tell us when he is in the
Valley of Humiliation, nor when he is on the top of the Delectable
Mountain.

There is a reticence about him at this time which we should learn to
respect and to reverence. I told you at the first meeting that Nature put
the shell around the egg so we would keep our fingers out of it, and Nature
puts that shell of reticence around the boy and the girl at that time so we
will keep our blundering fingers out and leave them to solve their problems
with their help and that of the good Lord who is watching over them.

Authority has little hold over him at this time, traditions none at all.
The influence of early training which have rooted themselves in his very
life are very powerful and they will hold him, and the Lord have mercy on
the boy whose early traditions do not hold him at that time. Remember it
is not his fault; that