2.  THRESHOLD OF HONOR.—­Think of a man like that; in whom the passions and vices have burned themselves out, putting on the airs of a saint and claiming to have reformed.  Aye, reformed, when there is no longer sweetness in the indulgence of lust.  Think of such loathsome bestiality, dragging its slimy body across the threshold of honor and nobility and asking a pure woman, with the love-light of heaven in her eyes, to pass her days with him; to accept him as her lord; to be satisfied with the burnt-out, shriveled forces of manhood left; to sacrifice her purity that he may be redeemed, and to respect in a husband what she would despise in the brute.

3.  STOP.—­If you are, then, on the highway to this state of degradation, stop.  If already you have sounded the depths of lost manhood, then turn, and from the fountain of life regain your power, before you perpetrate the terrible crime of marriage, thus wrecking a woman’s life and perhaps bringing into the world children who will live only to suffer and curse the day on which they were born and the father who begat them.

4.  SEXUAL IMPOTENCY.—­Sexual impotency means sexual starvation, and drives many wives to ruin, while a similar lack among wives drives husbands to libertinism.  Nothing so enhances the happiness of married couples as this full, life-abounding, sexual vigor in the husband, thoroughly reciprocated by the wife, yet completely controlled by both.

5.  TWO CLASSES OF SUFFERERS.—­There are two classes of sufferers.  First, those who have only practiced self-abuse and are suffering from emissions.  Second, those who by overindulgence in marital relations, or by dissipation with women, have ruined their forces.

6.  THE REMEDY.—­For self-abuse:  When the young man has practiced self-abuse for some time, he finds, upon quitting the habit, that he has nightly emissions.  He becomes alarmed, reads every sensational advertisement in the papers, and at once comes to the conclusion that he must take something. Drugs are not necessary.

7.  STOP THE CAUSE.—­The one thing needful, above all others, is to stop the cause.  I have found that young men are invariably mistaken as to what is the cause.  When asked as to the first cause of their trouble, they invariably say it was self-abuse, etc., but it is not. It is the thought. This precedes the handling, and, like every other cause, must be removed in order to have right results.

8.  STOP THE THOUGHT.—­But remember, stop the thought!  You must not look after every woman with lustful thoughts, nor go courting girls who will allow you to hug, caress and kiss them, thus rousing your passions almost to a climax.  Do not keep the company of those whose only conversation is of a lewd and depraved character, but keep the company of those ladies who awaken your higher sentiments and nobler impulses, who appeal to the intellect and rouse your aspiration, in whose presence you would no more feel your passions aroused than in the presence of your own mother.