Confidential Chats with Girls

by William Lee Howard

While it takes only one spring and summer to make a full-grown flower, or even a robin, the girl needs twelve or fifteen years after she is born to get into her budding age. And her future health, morals and happiness all depend upon how the first four or five years of the budding age is lived. And to live so that she will reach the highest development of woman, the girl must understand all the laws of God and live according to these laws.

It is my purpose in these Chats to show you these laws, as well as to plainly point out to you how man and woman have constantly been disobeying God’s words and how we are suffering in consequence of our ignorance and disobedience.

Your ovaries are in place when you are born. Of course they are tiny things and not developed. They remain inactive for many years after you are born. But at about ten years of age the blood commences to flow through them and they gradually develop, like the flower buds, until they reach their ripeness. Of course this development varies in different girls according to their nationality; those from the southern countries developing earlier than those from a more rigid climate. About fourteen years of age is the average age in this country.

When the ovaries are developed the womb has also grown, so that every month it gets rid of blood that accumulates there. But at this period the womb is a very tender organ, delicate, not fully fastened to the ligaments from which it hangs, and any rough play, strain or carelessness at the time of menstruation may ruin you for life.

Every girl should be proud of this budding process and care for it with a heart full of thankfulness. Just see how the little budding trees and flowers are cared for by a good gardener, how careful he is to assist Nature, how by this reverence and thought the wild flowers are brought under cultivation and by the means of the pure soil in which they are planted, by protecting them from frost and harsh treatment, what beautiful blossoms, scents and radiance results.

The laws of God make the wonderful growth and development possible, but man, by acknowledging these laws and abiding by them, is able to increase the beauty and usefulness of all growths.

It is just so with us. If we acknowledge the beneficent order which controls us, if we reverently study to understand God’s intentions, then we are aided in all we do to perfect our own development, moral beauty and health. The reward we receive is in having children follow us who have benefited by our reverential and knowing efforts. It is only by such an attitude towards Nature that we progress. Shame of our God-given gifts, studied ignorance of all His laws, the ignoring of our powers for reproducing our kind, all mean a going backwards in civilization. Disease, sin and debasement is certain to follow, and does follow, for most of the misery, disease and poverty is due to our past attitude in ignoring the details of the blossoming period of girls, by allowing the process to go on, paying no attention to the soil—associations and environments—of either the girl or the boy.

Everything in nature moves in cycles—that is, moves in regular periods. The stars, the planets, the sun, the earth, the moon, the tides, the seasons, all go and return at certain fixed intervals. Growths of all kinds on this earth have their periods of birth, development, death. The active periods of every living thing is taken up with reproductive occurrences, or the getting ready for reproduction. The female dog has her regular periods when she is ready to be a happy mother, so do the pretty deer, the squirrels, the fishes, everything. When the fishes’ regular period comes around in the spring, we call it the spawning time, with the birds the pretty name of mating. With the woman we call it the menstrual period, from the Latin word meaning monthly.

A pure, honest woman, honest to herself and her God, can see nothing but a wonderful provision of God for keeping the earth populated and the opportunities for bringing man to a nearer understanding of his Maker.

We need no orthodox religion to make man feel the essence of God within him when he understands the laws under which he lives, and how by his own efforts he can improve his powers and give greater ones to those who have received his blood through a pure woman.