The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1892-12-01
THE DANGERS TO THE YOUNG.

Cos S'hiSSN HNSSNN'sNNASAAS
societies having in view highe
= moral and intellectual training.
q An appeal has recently been made
! for the establishment of depart
, ment of Human Culture" to pertec
, both sexes in knowledge O
the effects of physical degradation
, in order that physical weakness, i'm
becility, idiocy, deaf and dumbness
and all the inherited ills of life may
be avoided.
Such a society is too aesthetic in its
limitations ever to be of general and
practical use. A school of physiology
would do just as much good, and that,
like normal schools, could only benefit
those who taught the science. Any
such society is too limited in it's ad-
vantages to make the impressions as
general as the subject demands.
Other methods of moral reform
have been resorted to, such
as the suppression of all
homes harboring the social
evil or of any other nature by which
the morals of the youth are corrupted,
but societies and laws have been in
effectual and always will be inefect-
ual for the suppression of vice and the
encouragement of innocent enjoy
ments. The societies become fanatical
and the laws are imperative because
they are not sustained by the senti-
ment of the community.
Success has been attained in pro-
tecting the female sex from the con-
terminating influences of our social
system and it ought to teach
us lesson on this subject,
Early in life virtue and morality are
taught the girls of family and under
the influence of pure home and an
excellent mother and father they are
reared in purity of thought and con-
duct in the midst of great general pol
Luton, while the sons of the family
are left to learn lessons of vice from
the daily association with fathers
whose daughters never hear an inn
proper word from their lips. In ad-
dition to this the sons of family be-
come ore thoroughly acquainted
with the moral, or rather immoral,
status of the father than the girls.
Men whose secret lives are
thoroughly corrupt blame their
sons for following in their
footsteps. The mother or wife
and daughters are the very last per-
sons in community who know the
secret lives of husbands and fathers,
but their sons know all about it in
very early life. The father may think
he is concealing the facts from his
sons, but he is mistaken. They know
all about every escapade that he
hides so successfully from his wife and
daughters, and it is foolish for him to
expect to maze of his sons upright
and honorable men, free from all the
foibles of free and easy life if he does
not lead life above suspicion himself.
The daughters of family come
more under the influence and training
of the mother and are pure and holy
women, while the influence of the
mother over the sons is limited to
their early boyhood, but when they
are old enough to know the habits of
the father-if his habits happen to be
bad, all the motherly influence is
either destroyed forever or slumbers
for years, and they indulge them
selves in the same course of life that
the father is enjoying.
The home is the society and moral
example. There are learned the only
laws by which the youth of our coun-
try can be protected from the cor
rupting influence of any and all COM
munities.
1t is often remarked that there is
great contrast in family between the
sons and daughters of that family.
1t is not at all strange; the sons do
not have the same advantages as the
daughters. The daughters are
trained by he mother in all the
womanly and Christian graces; the
son, for while, may have that same
training, but as soon as he is free from
the restraints of home and becomes
acquainted with the dissolute life of
the father, all the mothers lessons are
forgotten and he lives the life of his
father until maturity and better in
tluences, marriage for instance, turns
him from the error of his way and
kindles the embers buried so long with
the recollections of his mother.