through this in the nursery.  There this rule of convention has no advantage, and many a serious disadvantage.  It is easy to say to a child, the first time he makes an ‘awkward’ remark in public:  ’Look here, laddie, you may say what you like to me or to daddy, but, for some reason or other, one does not talk about these’ (only say what things) ‘in public.’  Only let your child make the remark in public before you speak (never mind the shock to your caller’s feelings), don’t warn him against doing so” (Ennis Richmond, Boyhood, p. 60).  Sex must always be a mystery, but, as Mrs. Richmond rightly says, “the real and true mysteries of generation and birth are very different from the vulgar secretiveness with which custom surrounds them.”

The question as to the precise names to be given to the more private bodily parts and functions is sometimes a little difficult to solve.  Every mother will naturally follow her own instincts, and probably her own traditions, in this matter.  I have elsewhere pointed out (in the study of “The Evolution of Modesty”) how widespread and instinctive is the tendency to adopt constantly new euphemisms in this field.  The ancient and simple words, which in England a great poet like Chaucer could still use rightly and naturally, are so often dropped in the mud by the vulgar that there is an instinctive hesitation nowadays in applying them to beautiful uses.  They are, however, unquestionably the best, and, in their origin, the most dignified and expressive words.  Many persons are of opinion that on this account they should be rescued from the mud, and their sacredness taught to children.  A medical friend writes that he always taught his son that the vulgar sex names are really beautiful words of ancient origin, and that when we understand them aright we cannot possibly see in them any motive for low jesting.  They are simple, serious and solemn words, connoting the most central facts of life, and only to ignorant and plebeian vulgarity can they cause obscene mirth.  An American man of science, who has privately and anonymously printed some pamphlets on sex questions, also takes this view, and consistently and methodically uses the ancient and simple words.  I am of opinion that this is the ideal to be sought, but that there are obvious difficulties at present in the way of attaining it.  In any case, however, the mother should be in possession of a very precise vocabulary for all the bodily parts and acts which it concerns her children to know.

It is sometimes said that at this early age children should not be told, even in a simple and elementary form, the real facts of their origin but should, instead, hear a fairy-tale having in it perhaps some kind of symbolic truth.  This contention may be absolutely rejected, without thereby, in any degree, denying the important place which fairy-tales hold in the imagination of young children.  Fairy-tales have a real value to the child; they are a mental food he needs, if he is not to be spiritually starved; to deprive him of fairy-tales at this age is to do him a wrong which can never be made up at any subsequent age.  But not only are sex matters too vital even in childhood to be safely made matter for a fairy-tale, but the real facts are themselves as wonderful as any fairy-tale, and appeal to the child’s imagination with as much force as a fairy-tale.