our children relatively, not absolutely, in the knowledge that we do not control all their environment.  I think the solution of the difficulty is to teach the facts of sex in a perfectly calm, unemotional, matter-of-fact manner, just as one teaches the laws of digestion.  When knowledge of evil is thrust upon our child let us be sorry with him that those other children have never been taught, and that they are doing their bodies such sad mischief.  But don’t exaggerate it; don’t be too shocked; don’t condemn the poor little sinners, who are also victims, too severely.  Charity toward wrong-doing is the best prophylactic against imitation.  We never feel the lure of a sin which grieves us in another; but often the call of a sin which we too strongly condemn.  Because the very strength of the condemnation rouses our imaginations, is in itself an emotion, and, since it is certainly not a loving one, must necessarily be linked with all other unloving and therefore evil emotions.  As far as possible, let us keep feeling out of this subject, until such time as the true and beautiful feeling of love between husband and wife arises and uplifts it.

FATHERS

And now comes the editor of these lessons and accuses me of neglecting the fathers!  Nothing in this world could be farther from my thoughts.  Not only do I agree with him that “all ordinary children have fathers, and it might be well to put in a paragraph;” but I am cheerfully willing to write a whole book on the subject, provided that a mere modicum of readers can be assured me.  I fairly ache to talk to fathers, having a really great ideal of them, and whenever a class of them can be induced to take up a correspondence course I shall be glad to conduct it.

Joking aside, however, I truly feel that the saddest lack many of our children have to suffer is the lack of fathers; and the saddest lack our men have to suffer is the lack of children.  So little are most men awake to this subject that I am perfectly convinced that much of the prevalent “race suicide” is due to their objections to a large family, rather than to their wives’.  Upon them comes the burden of support.  They get few of the joys which belong to children, and nearly all of the woes.  Seldom do they share the games of their offspring, or their happy times; and almost always the worst difficulties are thrust upon them for solution.  Not that they often solve them!  How can we expect it?

There is Edgar growing very untruthful and defiant.  We have concealed all the first stages of the disease for fear of bothering poor tired papa.  At last it reaches such a height that we can conceal it no longer.  We fling the desperate boy at the very head of the bewildered father, and then have turns of bitter disappointment because the remedies that are applied may be so much cruder, even, than our own.  Here is a boy who gets close to his father only to find the proximity very uncomfortable; and a father who becomes acquainted with his son only through the ugly revelations of his worst faults.