Year: 1875

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 sat
lsfaction, and if the mother does not give
it legitmately, the child will be only 100
likely to gain it from sources of whose
very existence the parent is ignorant,
simply because to her they are probably
superfuous.


There are thousands OF mothers who
will talk with the kindest unreserve to
those who are not bound to them by any
tie but that of friendship, who yet feel the
most false and foolish delicacy with their
own daughters. knoW this TO be fact.
A great many young girls have come to
me for information and advice on person
nj subjects, whom an unnatural reserve
kept from applying TO their own mothers.
] know it by experience. found it much
harder to do my duty in this respect to
my own daughters than to the daughters
OF others. And yet the duty is an i'm
psrative one which requires to be attended
TO, both much earlier and more positively
than was necessary in your own case.-
For assure yourself of one thing, that the
knowledge which came TO woman half
century ago, only as result Of expert
ence, is ready now at every street corner,
and in every kitchen, for your little girl,
as an answer to her first and wondering
intuition.


Nay, while she nurses her doll and
wears her childhood aprons, all the mys-
teries of human nature are questioning
her innocent heart. VIII you leave her
t. soil her white soul with the filthy fan
les of dime novels or still worse books
Who is to answer her? Is some servant
girl, lewd and ignorant, to usurp her
mothers holy Office and defle the sacred
sanctuary of your home? Or win you,
with calm and rcverent wisdom, lead her
into the "house Of lile," and show her
how "fearfully and wonderfully we are
made ?"


Will you not, then, explain TO her that
this human "body is the temple Of the
Holy Ghost bought with a price," and
that it cannot be defled even by an i'm
pure thought without SHINING against him
who cleansed it with his precious blood,
making our bodies "mem bers of his own"
Such teaching is necessary TO keep her
morally healthy and if you can succeed
in inspiring her with profound reverence
fr purity of soul, you have done very
mush to secure her health, her intellect,
and that joyous, cheerful abandon which,
through the glorious privilege of natural
girlhood, is, alas ! every. year becoming
more rare.


But this first, primary instruction ne
elected, what follows? Physical abuse
and degradation. A sin against nature,
which gradually makes your child (born
a little lower than the angels below the
b asts Of the field.


/ am quite aware that this is very del
isate 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 does not per-
NIT them TO speak of things it does not
forbid them to do, or the scotfing of the
vulgar and light-minded, will not deter
the serious and benevolent from its
consideration.


Physicians see the mighty evil filing
our asylums, robbing marriage and pa
ternity ofall its divinity, digging myriads
Of tiny graves for infants born of parents
to- enfeebled to give them enduring life,
and most OF them "pass by on the other
Lido -