ptations of the city. Schoolboys
are subjected to many lures from without just at the moment when they
are filled with an inner tumult which utterly bewilders them and
concerning which no one has instructed them save in terms of empty
precept and unintelligible warning.

We are authoritatively told that the physical difficulties are
enormously increased by uncontrolled or perverted imaginations, and all
sound advice to young men in regard to this subject emphasizes a clean
mind, exhorts an imagination kept free from sensuality and insists upon
days filled with wholesome athletic interests. We allow this regime to
be exactly reversed for thousands of young people living in the most
crowded and most unwholesome parts of the city. Not only does the stage
in its advertisements exhibit all the allurements of sex to such an
extent that a play without a "love interest" is considered foredoomed to
failure, but the novels which form the sole reading of thousands of
young men and girls deal only with the course of true or simulated love,
resulting in a rose-colored marriage, or in variegated misfortunes.

Often the only recreation possible for young men and young women
together is dancing, in which it is always easy to transgress the
proprieties. In many public dance halls, however, improprieties are
deliberately fostered. The waltzes and two-steps are purposely slow, the
couples leaning heavily on each other barely move across the floor, all
the jollity and bracing exercise of the peasant dance is eliminated, as
is all the careful decorum of the formal dance. The efforts to obtain
pleasure or to feed the imagination are thus converged upon the senses
which it is already difficult for young people to understand and to
control. It is therefore not remarkable that in certain parts of the
city groups of idle young men are found whose evil imaginations have
actually inhibited their power for normal living. On the streets or in
the pool-rooms where they congregate their conversation, their tales of
adventure, their remarks upon women who pass by, all reveal that they
have been caught in the toils of an instinct so powerful and primal that
when left without direction it can easily overwhelm its possessor and
swamp his faculties. These young men, who do no regular work, who expect
to be supported by their mothers and sisters and to get money for the
shows and theatres by any sort of disreputable undertaking, are in
excellent training f