Confidential Chats with Boys

by William Lee Howard

Frequently boys are frightened almost to helplessness because some of these pimples appear upon the parts surrounding the sex organs. These pimples are generally from the same cause; most often due to the curling of the young hairs which re-enter the skin near the point where they come out.

In all these matters you only need to keep your face and other hairy parts clean by simple washing with soap and water. Use only a plain, pure soap—castile soap is excellent for this purpose. Don’t use highly-scented soaps. Many of these are poisonous to such conditions, as I have explained.

When you feel that it is about time to commence shaving, do it yourself—DON’T “let a barber do it.” It is an easy matter to learn to handle a razor, and now the safety razors make it inexcusable to go to a barber. Then think of the nastiness involved in having a stranger’s hands running all over your sensitive skin! Would you let any other kind of brush which had been used upon a thousand of all sorts of human skins, be smeared over yours? Then the soaps, towels, all the things the barber uses! Ugh, if you had seen all the diseases I have seen on men’s faces, you would allow no hands but your own to touch your face. You know where your hands have been; do you know where the barber’s were a half-hour before he shaved you?

True, all first-class barbers try to have everything they come in contact with kept clean and sterilized, but we cannot get away from the fact that the razor, brush, soap and hand of your own are far, far preferable to use on your tender face. Then traveling, if you do not shave yourself, you are liable to be obliged to enter some barber shop from which you come out diseased; perhaps diseased for life. And if you do not know all about these diseases they will get such a hold upon your system that your career is ended. There are many other good reasons why you should shave yourself; one will come to your mind—the fact that you save valuable time and can start out in the morning looking clean and neat, as every gentleman should and does.

In traveling and other conditions which keep you away from your own toilets, especially in the public schools, the seats of the closets are often found to be covered with a form of lice—“crabs” they are vulgarly called. When these get on to you they cause a terrible itching. They will become so irritating that you cannot keep still. Many a boy has been sent home from school because he could not keep still or refrain from scratching himself. This form of scratching has often been thought by his teacher to mean evil thoughts or habits.

Poor fellows, how many of you have been unjustly accused!

If you will examine yourself closely, you will find the tiny lice. Little bits of things looking like a black pin-point. The best thing under these circumstances is to go to the doctor. He will give you an ointment to apply which will soon kill them. So don’t let some older boy, through fun and the love of scaring you, or perhaps through his own ignorance, frighten you. Some boys and shameful men will tell you that the itching is a sure sign of self-abuse, or that you have a bad disease which will soon rot your whole body. And as many boys have once or more done things of which they are ashamed—always a good sign is this shame—these mean tales do much injury. There is nothing in it, boys; just “crabs.”

It is every strange, little symptom which comes to the developing youth that is seized upon by the Quacks to exaggerate in their advertisements and try to make you believe that physical or mental ruin is right ahead of you—unless you buy their drugs. Here is one way they work upon the youth’s ignorance and fears.

You are just an ordinary boy; full of fun, play and no better nor worse than the rest of us. One day you receive a circular or booklet through the mail. There is no printing on the envelope. Just one of the catalogues or circulars you sent for, as you wanted to see the prices of bats and mitts for next season’s games.

So thinks your mother also. And your father? Well, he is too busy making money for you all to really know what his son needs and wants in the way of confidential talks. But you will know when you have a boy—I am sure of this.