7.  How many bright and intelligent young men have met their doom and blighted the innocent lives of others, all on account of the secret follies and vices of men.

8.  PROTECTION.—­Girls, you, who are too poor and too honest to disguise aught in your character, with your sweet soul shining through every act of your lives, beware of the men who smile upon you.  Study human nature, and try and select a virtuous companion.

10.  SYPHILITIC POISON INERADICABLE.—­Many of our best and ablest physicians assert that syphilitic poison, once infected, there can be no total disinfection during life; some of the virus remains in the system, though it may seem latent.  Boards of State Charities in discussing the causes of the existence of whole classes of defectives hold to the opinion given above.  The Massachusetts board in its report has these strong words on the subject: 

“The worst is that, though years may have passed since its active stage, it permeates the very seed of life and causes strange affections or abnormalities in the offspring, or it tends to lessen their vital force, to disturb or to repress their growth, to lower their standard of mental and bodily vigor, and to render life puny and short.”

11.  A SERPENT’S TOOTH.—­“The direct blood-poisoning, caused by the absorption into the system of the virus (syphilis) is more hideous and terrible in its effect than that of a serpent’s tooth. This may kill outright, and there’s an end; but that, stingless and painless, slowly and surely permeates and vitiates the whole system of which it becomes part and parcel, like myriads of trichinae, and can never be utterly cast out, even by salivation.

“Woe to the family and to the people in whose veins the poison courses!

“It would seem that nothing could end the curse except utter extermination.  That, however, would imply a purpose of eternal vengeance, involving the innocent with the guilty.”

This disease compared with small-pox is as an ulcer upon a finger to an ulcer in the vitals.  Small-pox does not vitiate the blood of a people; this disease does.  Its existence in a primary form implies moral turpitude.

12.  CASES CITED.—­Many cases might be cited.  We give but one.  A man who had contracted the disease reformed his ways and was apparently cured.  He married, and although living a moral life was compelled to witness in his little girl’s eye-balls, her gums, and her breath the result of his past sins.  No suffering, no expense, no effort would have been too great could he but be assured that his offspring might be freed from these results.

13.  PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE.—­Here is a case where the old adage, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” may be aptly applied.  Our desire would be to herald to all young men in stentorian tones the advice, “Avoid as a deadly enemy any approaches or probable pitfalls of the disease.  Let prevention be your motto and then you need not look for a cure.”