Confidential Chats with Boys

by William Lee Howard

Take cold? Not a bit of it. These are old women’s tales; what all boys need are the true facts of life from men. You want to be stopped from being cuddled up in warm blankets and told not to get out of bed, and all that nonsense.

While you are breaking up any impulses to do that which you know is injurious, is the time for developing the will. This can be done by all boys and bring you to a state of self-control that has been sadly lacking in the past generation.

If you want big muscles, those always under your control and acting when and how you want them to, you exercise them regularly. Those which have the least development and are not under ready command, you pay much attention to strengthening and bringing under control. By this way you soon get them under full control. The will can be made to do as you desire, by the same method. When the temptation comes, and as you are pouring over the cold water, just say: “Will, do as I want—Take my mind off these subjects. Will, drive out that dirty picture—That’s the way, now, once more.” If the thoughts still linger and try to throw down the struggling will, stay up reading some interesting book. Some exciting book that you really like, something about pirates, Indians, detective stories or travelers’ tales. I think it is a good thing to have always on hand a book you want to read. Keep such a book for emergencies, just as a soldier carries bandages for emergencies. When a thought or impulse comes to you that may carry you to wrongful acts, jump out of bed and get the book and read, even if you stay up all night. This helps to strengthen the will and takes you safely over the danger point. You may call such a book: “The First Aid to the UNinjured.”

By these many little methods you gradually develop the will to act your way. You do more, you strengthen it, make it a BIG power for you to move and direct and finally DO BIG THINGS. The will certainly can be brought to a high development, and what a magnificent sight is the man with big muscles, big brain and controlled will force.

Of course you cannot do all this at once. Do not be discouraged if you fail time after time. Stick at it. Every EFFORT means an increase of power. It is like the gradual development of the muscles, as I have said. You all know the story of the man who commenced to carry a calf and lifted it every day until it had grown to be a cow. Then he could lift and carry off the cow. Do you suppose he could at first have lifted a cow? Of course not. Neither can you carry off the first attempt of your will to get the better of you. But by keeping at it and doing a little every day, in time you can get a strangle-hold on it. When you get this hold call to it to get up and OBEY. It will do your bidding.

You need no drugs, medicines or “electric belts” to get you to full manhood. Just the power in you well brought out is the way to complete physical and mental development. And again, don’t get discouraged. Man never succeeded in anything by remembering past failures. It is just this constant fighting discouragement and mistakes that shows where the faults lie, and knowing these faults, we can in the next attempt avoid some of them, finally all of them.

I have mentioned “electric belts.” These are another great fake, a monstrous fake, and if the people were not ignorant of the facts I have been telling you, such frauds could not live a day. You have all seen those pictures in the papers of the big, strong-looking man to whose arm clings a smiling young woman. Then there is the companion picture, the picture of the “down and out” man looking as if he had one foot in the grave and one hand reaching out to the insane asylum. Of course the advertisement tells you that this is the way he looked before he used the “electric belt.” If it were not for the curse of these pictures and the great injury they do to the ignorant people, these advertisements of “electric belts” would seem roaringly funny to the doctor. The fact is that all the statements in these advertisements and similar ones are nothing but bare-faced lies—every one of them.

Again you say, “I know a man who was cured by one of these ‘electric belts.’” Or a youth will state that he wore one for three months and was made into a well man again.

Both these statements are probably true, and will be given in writing to the advertisers who challenge the world to dispute the facts.

But how, then, if these advertisements are frauds? Let us take a part of the advertisements and discover: