Last winter a friend gave me a book entitled, “Letters of Love to Our Girls,” but mamma and papa hid it. I asked them why they did so. I received the answer, “It is a book that no married person should read, let alone a young girl.”
I have a little sister nine years old. For four years she has often asked questions about the origin of animals. When a colt is born or a calf, or kitten, or pigs, she always asks the same question. “Where did Dolly find her colt? Where did Lily find her calf?” etc., and they always put her off with some falsehood.
Please advise me how I may be able to rid myself of this habit.
Yours in earnest,
——
I gave her the following advice:
“Dear Friend:
Your letter received. In reply, I am glad you had the courage to ask for advice and to state facts so frankly.
Your trouble began with your false training in childhood. If you had been taught the sacredness of the sexual organs and their functions, your mind would have been safeguarded against this vice. Instead, you received the very opposite information. Half-truths, clothed in vulgar language, received from the ignorant and vicious, lead naturally to a morbid interest in matters of sex and consequently to a habit of lascivious thinking. Impure thinking causes the blood to rush to the sexual organs. The inflamed and gorged condition, due to this rush of blood to these parts, results in frequent experiences of sex consciousness and passion. This leads very naturally to the handling of the organs of sex.
That you may clearly understand the relation of the mind to the secret sin, and what you must do if you would break from it, I will use the following illustration: Suppose that you have been at hard work for five or six hours and have had nothing to eat during the time. You now come into the presence of a well-spread table, or a basket full of luscious fruit. You must wait ten minutes for others to take their places at the table. You become quite conscious of hunger; you remember how the kinds of food taste, how you have enjoyed them before, and you are eager to begin eating. These mental states cause the blood to rush to the salivary glands. They are stimulated to unusual activity. Under these conditions the saliva flows rapidly. Just at this moment, something unusual occurs. The blinding flash of lightning followed quickly by a deafening peal of thunder. Looking out you see some limbs falling from a nearby tree. You run to the window and for ten minutes your attention is wholly called from the thought of food. Now the saliva is flowing just fast enough to keep your mouth pleasantly moist. Excitement over, you again become interested in the food, hunger returns, you begin once more to entertain pleasant thoughts about the food, blood rushes to the mouth and the salivary glands are stimulated and the saliva is formed many times faster than when your mind was wholly engaged in the exciting scene a few minutes before.