The Portland daily press., 1870-07-18
Terms $500 per onnuss, IN odrance.
CORTLAND.
Monday Morning, July l8 1870.
" dangerous Laxify.v

/
| TO the Editor Of The Press.
| -FOUR leader OF July 1st, with the above cap
tloh, lies before me. l am glad TO see it,
the hrst half oft, especially. The prevailing
looseness offeeling, no less than O, practice, in
regard to the relation of the sexes, calls for the
earnest attention Of every man and every wo-
man who cares anything for the health, happi-
ness and ennobling of our kind. I need not
rehearse at length the outward symptoms.
TO show how rotten-hearted in this respect is
society, low and high. Aside from the statis-
tlcs OF prostitution; the frequent tragedies
whereof the Sickles and Mcfarland affairs
form but one type; and the fearful, though less
loudmouthed witness that the mad-house
bears, lis it not terribly alarming fact that
respectable" leading journals give promi-
nent place,-or any place at all-in their
columns to the fiimsiy masked advertise
ments of butchers of unborn babes?
1t does but little good to lament over this
state OF affairs, or to denounce the sinners.
Lamentations, doubts, discouragelnents, all
are wdsted things" He that is without sin
among you, let him first cast a stone.n The
immediate cause is the tyranny of an appetite
In itself tremendous, and hard enough to con-
troll and hallow under favoring conditions
but which, LEFT unframed and unsanct:fied in
early yeas, sways mans whole being with
despotic power. And one great reason it
gains such an ascendancy Is, that BOYS and
girls are allowed to grow up in ignorance of
its true meaning and province. We make mis-
take, disastrous mistake, in trying to ignore
the distinctions between male and female in
bringing up our children. 1t is altogether
false delicacy that blinks this subject, and
leaves the young to pick up the lowest and
coarsest notions from servants and playmates.
These keen-eyed little ones speedily discern
that here is a tabooed subject,-one on which
their parents, who ought to be their confdants
In everything, will not let confidence subsist
between them; the child, with heightened Gu
riositY, turns elsewhere for information, and
gets it in no questionable shape" but in one
beyond all question damnable.
Sir, these things ought not SO to be! Pal
late as best you may the present evil, there is
but one radical remedy. Strike at the rootl
TEACH opening, stainless minds the Truth!
They ask for Bread of Life turn them not
aside with stones! When they seek, as they
aoiH seek,-in simple purity, oftheir naturally
appointed teachers-Oh! in Gods name, let
them find! "To tho pure all things are pure;
and the divine miracle of reproduction, plain
ly and tanderly set forth by father or mother
cannot dehle the souls of their inquiring Off
spring. On the contrary, you may, at that
plastic epoch, print upon them ineffaceably
high and holy ideas tou thing the origin of hui
man life. Sow the wheat betimes; do not let
the Devil get in ahead of you with a full plant
tares.
Thus shall we apply constitutional treat
ment-sLow, like all true remedies, but like
wise sure. knowledge must precede virtue,
for no chance act can be a moral one." And
"if ever the reformation of the world is to be
accomplisEed-if ever the millennium of pu-
rity, chastity and intense happiness reaches
this earth, it can only do so through rightly
directed prenatal laps. N.E.B.
Florence, N. j., July s, 1870.