Year: 1873

ers and Daughters.


As young girls near the boundary line
where childhood and womanhood meet.
there comes a natural, wondering interest
as to the different relationships they see
around them. This curiosity being the
voice of nature, imperatively claims salts
faction, and if the mother does not give it
legitimately, the child will be only too ike
ly to gain it from sources of whose very
existence she is ignorant, simply because to
her they are superfuous.


There are thousands of mothers who talk
with the kindest unreserve to those not
bound to them by any tie except friend
ship, who yet feel the most false and fool
lsh dellcacy with their daughters. 1 know
this to be the case. A great many young
girls have to come to me for information
and advice on personal subjects, whom an
unnatural reserve kept from applying to
to their own mothers. know it again by
experience. 1 found it much harder to do
my duty in this respect to my own daught-
ers than to the daughters of others. And
yet the duty is an imperative one, which
requires to be attended to both much ear
her and more positively than was necessary
IN your own case. For assure yourself of
one thing, that the knowledge that came to
women half century ago only as the re-
suit of experience, is ready now at every
street corner, and in every kitchen, for your
little girl, as answers to her first wondering
intuition.


Nay, while she still nurses her doll and
wears her childhood's aprons, all the myste-
RES of human nature are questioning her
innocent heart. Who is to answer herr
VIII you leave her to soil her white soul
with the filthy fancies of dime novels, or
still worse books !? Is some servant girl,
lewd and ignorant, to usurp her mothers
holy office, and defile the sacred sanctuary
of your home? Or will you, with calm and
reyerent wisdom lead her into the sshouse of
life, - and show her how ssfearfully and
wonderfully we are made?


VIII you not explain to her that this hu-
man body is the temple of the Holy Ghost
bought with price, and that it cannot be
defiled even by an impure thought, without
SHINING against Him, who cleansed it with
his own precious blood, making our bodies
members of his own ?" Such teaching is
necessary to keep her morally healthy, and
if you can succeed in inspiring her with q
profound reverence for purity of soul, you
have done very much to secure her health,
her intellect, and that joyous, cheerful
abandon, which, though the glorious priv
ilege of natural girlhood, is, alas every
year becoming more rare.


But this first primary instruction neglect
ed, what follows? Physical abuse and deg
radiation. A sin against nature which grad
ually makes your child (born a little lower
than the angels) below the beasts of the
field


am quite aware that this is a very deli
cate subject, as well as one of the saddest
of social problems. But ignoring an evil
does not annihilate it. And the anger of
| those whose false refinement forbids them
to speak of the things it does not forbid
them to do, or the scofing of the vulgar
and light-rninded, will not deter the serious
and benevolent from its consideration.


Physicians see the mighty evil filing our
lunatic asylurns, robbing marriage and pa
ternity of all its divinity, digging myriads
of tiny graves for infants born OF parents
too enfeebled to give them enduring life,
and most of them with groan of pity
''pass by on the other side"


There is no doubt, however, that the
great majority of young people, now slaves
of the most repulsive habits, might have
been saved had theirpareuts early explained
to them the eternal laws of nature, and their
intimate connection with whatsoever is
lovely and of good report" And further,
it is also the duty of parents, having in
structed, to watch until virtue has acquired
the strength of habit whose foundations are
laid in piety and knowledge.


Slow, jnsidious, unsupported suicide is
becoming household crime Children
make their own cofins day by day, and pa
rents are either ignorant or Indifferent to
the fact. Against this sin physicians must
become active missionaries, for their words,
weighed with knowledge, will have an ir-
resistible influence.


But prevention is always better than cure.
And therefore mothers and daughters should
have but one heart, and fathers and sons
walk together as friends.