With most lads I should go a step further; I should give the boy one of the White Cross papers, “A Strange Companion."[14] It is impossible to lay down hard and fast rules; it is impossible to make so many jam-pots of even young humanity, to be tied up and labelled and arranged upon the same shelf.  Each individuality has to be dealt with in all its mysterious idiosyncrasy.  One boy may be so reserved that it is better to write to him than to talk face to face; another may find the greatest possible strength and comfort in freedom of speech and the feeling that there is no barrier between him and his mother with regard to being able to tell her freely of any temptations that may assail him.  Your mother’s instincts will be your best guide as to what method to adopt with each of your boys.

If the father of the lad can be induced, at any rate before he enters a boarding-school, to follow the advice of that remarkable man, Mr. Thring, the founder of Uppingham School, in his address to our Church Congress, and write a letter of plain warning and counsel to the lad, it would be an unspeakable help.  “My first statement,” says Mr. Thring, “is that all fathers ought to write such a letter to their sons.  It is not difficult, if done in a common-sense way."[15]

But now I come to what on all hands we must allow to be a point of extreme difficulty.  I think all head-masters, deeply concerned in the moral welfare of the boys under their charge, would emphatically endorse the following words of Dr. Butler’s: 

“It is certain, it must needs be, that boys should, at an early period of their boyhood, come to hear of the nature of sexual relations.  From whom should they first learn it?  Should it be with every accompaniment of coarseness, of levity, of obscenity?  From some ribald groom in the stables?  From some impure maidservant who has stolen into the household and the nursery?  From some brother only a year or two older, who has just received his first initiation in impurity at a private school and is too young to understand its danger?  Worst of all, from the idlest, and most corrupt, and most worthless set of boys at this same private school, who surround the newcomer within a few days, perhaps a few hours, of his first joining, and, with knowing looks and enticing words, try to probe his childish knowledge, and leave him half-ashamed of himself and keenly inquisitive for full initiation, if he finds that he knows nothing of this engrossing mystery?  Is it right, is it fair, is it consistent with religious duty or with common-sense, that a little boy of eight, or ten, or twelve, should be sent at this impressionable age to hear for the first time of facts of human nature which must ere long be known, and are part of God’s appointment?  Does not every dictate of humanity and of reason point to the conclusion that the dawn of this knowledge should be invested with all that is tender, and loving, and pure, and sacred, instead of being shrouded