3.  SEXUAL PROPENSITIES are possessed by all, and these must be held in abeyance, until they are needed for legitimate purposes.  Hence parents ought to understand the value to their children of mental and physical labor, to elevate and strengthen the intellectual and moral faculties, to develop the muscular system and direct the energies of the blood into healthful channels.  Vigorous employment of mind and body engrosses the vital energies and diverts them from undue excitement of the sexual desires.

Give your young people plenty of outdoor amusement; less of dancing and more of croquet and lawn tennis.  Stimulate the methods of pure thoughts in innocent amusement, and your sons and daughters will mature to manhood and womanhood pure and chaste in character.

4.  IGNORANCE DOES NOT MEAN INNOCENCE.—­It is a current idea, especially among our good common people, that the child should be kept in ignorance regarding the mystery of his own body and how he was created or came into the world.  This is a great mistake.  Parents must know that the sources of social impurity are great, and the child is a hundred times more liable to have his young mind poisoned if entirely ignorant of the functions of his nature than if judiciously enlightened on these important truths by the parent.  The parent must give him weapons of defense against the putrid corruption he is sure to meet outside the parental roof.  The child cannot get through the A, B, C period of school without it.

5.  CONFLICTING VIEWS.—­There is a great difference of opinion regarding the age at which the child should be taught the mysteries of nature:  some maintain that he cannot comprehend the subject before the age of puberty; others say “they will find it out soon enough, it is not best to have them over-wise while they are so young.  Wait a while.”  That is just the point (they will find it out), and we ask in all candor, is it not better that they learn it from the pure loving mother, untarnished from any insinuating remark, than that they should learn it from some foul-mouthed libertine on the street, or some giddy girl at school?  Mothers! fathers! which think you is the most sensible and fraught with the least danger to your darling boy or girl?

6.  DELAY IS FRAUGHT WITH DANGER.—­Knowledge on a subject so vitally connected with moral health must not be deferred.  It is safe to say that no child, no boy at least in these days of excitement and unrest, reaches the age of ten years without getting some idea of nature’s laws regarding parenthood.  And ninety-nine chances to one, those ideas will be vile and pernicious unless they come from a wise, loving and pure parent.  Now, we entreat you, parents, mothers! do not wait; begin before a false notion has had chance to find lodgment in the childish mind.  But remember this is a lesson of life, it cannot be told in one chapter, it is as important as the lessons of love and duty.