Plain Talks on Avoided Subjects

by Henry N. Guernsey

No judicious parents will allow a son or daughter to be alone much; to seek to be alone is always a bad sign and should be carefully guarded against without its being known that such precaution is observed. Furnish them liberally with instructive and innocent story books and let them read aloud to you or to each other. Take them to walk or ride when you go, and strive to make companions of them as much as possible, making whatever sacrifices are necessary to attain this end. Above all, encourage their making confidants of you. Let them feel that they can come and talk freely on any subject, no matter what its nature may be. Do this, and you have thrown around them a bulwark of defence that will withstand the repeated attacks of hosts of evil spirits. When night comes and they go to bed, let them learn to go to sleep at once; no play then—they may be read to sleep, but no romping or playing. No strange children should be allowed to sleep with yours; make them occupy separate rooms or at least separate beds; be sure that the sleeping places of your children are sacred to them alone. Nor is it advisable for children to sleep with a grown person of either sex and particularly not with servants—all for obvious reasons.

The observance of all these precautions against influences that might excite sexual disturbance is most sacred in its character and most needful even in a religious point of view; for there should be chastity above all things.

CHAPTER IV.
ADOLESCENCE OF THE MALE.

Adolescence of the male embraces the period of life from the age of fourteen or sixteen years to the age of twenty-five.

At about the age of fourteen years “the period of youth is distinguished by that advance in the evolution of the generative apparatus in both sexes, and by that acquirement of its power of functional activity, which constitutes the state of Puberty.” At this age the following great changes take place in the general appearance and deportment of the male: His frame becomes more angular and the masculine proportions more pronounced; increased strength and greater powers of endurance are manifested; the larynx enlarges and the voice becomes lower in pitch as well as rougher and more powerful; new feelings and desires awaken in the mind. His deportment becomes more commanding, his frivolity is less and less apparent, and the boy is lost in the man. If he has been so fortunate as to escape all the dangers and baneful influences of childhood, he is manly indeed, and we behold him with an unburdened conscience, bright intellect, frank address and good memory. His spirits are buoyant and his complexion clear; every function of his body is well performed, and no fatigue is felt after moderate exertion. He evinces that elasticity of body, and that happy control of himself and his feelings, which are indicative of the robust health and absence of care which should accompany youth. His time is devoted to his studies, duties and amusements; as he feels his stature increase, and his intellect enlarge, he gladly prepares for his coming struggle with the world.

All boys may come to this condition with proper training through the period of infancy and childhood; and after arriving at the adolescent age of their existence as they have the power of mind to choose, so also have they the power to refuse. The human race is created above the animal so that we are something more than mere animals; we are human beings with human propensities, human passions, human desires and human tastes, which are subject to the human brain, to the human reason and to the human will—all elevated and ennobled by the Divine Will. Man must not let himself down to be governed by animal passions; the moment he does that, his higher powers suffer and become weakened, and he becomes more like an inferior animal; if he persists in this downward course, his lower powers become strengthened until finally they transcend and rule the higher. Then, to all intents and purposes, such a man's head is downwards and the lower part of his body is upwards just where his head ought to be.

Man is a human being, yet, like the whole animal kingdom, he has appetites, desires and passions, as it is absolutely necessary that he should have. He has organs corresponding to these appetites, desires and passions, and it is necessary that he should have them. A proper understanding in regard to this matter will convince anyone of the truth of this assertion. Our Creator doeth all things wisely and well, in the most perfect manner possible. Consequently, man with all his organs, parts and passions is just what he should be when he blossoms into youth, in the perfection of his adolescence as described above. In fact there could be no other form of creating man, for the Lord always creates in the most perfect way possible, according to one harmonious law which He has ordained to govern the creation of all beings.

Such a man is fully prepared to struggle with himself and the world at large. In his desires, appetites or passions of any kind, he, in his humanity, protected by his rational faculties and enlightened by the Divine Oracle of God, unquestionably has the power to choose between propriety and impropriety, between the right and the wrong, between the good and the bad. Take any evil into which a member of the human family may fall—the love of ardent spirit for instance; he first thinks of it and desires to partake of some. Finally he takes an opportunity to gratify his desire, does satisfy it for the time and thinks it very nice. The next craving is a little more intense, and he cannot overcome the temptation quite so easily as he could have done before, and at last he indulges again. So he goes on, step by step, until he may fall very low. The same thinking, feeling and desiring precedes the adoption of every vicious habit that was ever formed. Nor will anyone pretend to say that a persistent effort of the will power, at the very outset, when he first perceived the tendencies of his desires to do what he need not do, would not have prevented the evil; no argumentation will prevail in the face of stubborn facts, and the real facts are all on the side of purity and order.

These very young men or youths, as they progress through adolescence, may become tempted in a variety of ways, some to the use of ardent spirits or tobacco, others to lie, to steal, to forge, &c.; but the approach to all these evils is gradual and first comes through the mind. They first think about the action, turn it over and over in their minds until they come to greatly desire and then, later, to commit the evil which would not have been ultimated if the mind had been persistently set against it in the beginning. This is an indisputable fact.