rd to the lower animal propensities," says he, "the
only safe principle is, that nothing should be allowed which has a
tendency, directly or indirectly, to excite them. In many places there
prevails an alarming and criminal indifference upon this point. It is
one toward which the attention of the teacher should be carefully
directed. No sound should be suffered from the lips; no word, or
figure, or mark should be allowed to reach the eyes, to deface the wall
of the house or out-house, which could give offense to the most
sensitive delicacy. This is the teacher's business. He must not be
indifferent to it. He has no right to neglect it. He can not transfer it
to another. He, and he only, is responsible.[71] It is impossible to be
over-scrupulous in this matter. And the committee should see that the
teacher does his duty; otherwise all his lessons in duty are of no
avail, and the school, instead of being a source of purity, delicacy,
and refinement, becomes a fountain of corruption, throwing out
poisonous waters, and rendering the moral influence more pestiferous
than that fabled fountain of old, over which no creature of heaven could
fly and escape death."

[71] I would by no means free parents from responsibility in this
matter. They, if any class, may be said to be "alone responsible;" but,
in fact, all who are intrusted with the care of children share in the
responsibility. _Secret vice_, in the opinion of those who have had
occasion to remark the extent to which it is practiced, from colleges
and the higher seminaries of learning down to the common school, and
even in the nursery before the child is sent to school, prevails to an
alarming extent. It is often the principal, and, in many instances, the
sole cause of a host of evils that are commonly attributed to hard
study, among which are impaired nutrition, and general lassitude and
weakness, especially of the loins and back; loss of memory, dullness of
apprehension, and both indisposition and incapacity for study;
dizziness, affections of the eyes, headaches, etc., etc. Secret vice in
childhood and youth is also a fruitful source of _social vice_ later in
life, and of excesses even within the pale of wedlock, ruinous alike to
the parties themselves and to their offspring. Licentiousness in some of
its forms, as we have frequently had occasion to see, from the highest
testimony introduced into the text in various passages, in add