forbid their daughters
to engage themselves to young men who had most things to recommend
them, except too much means; and I have known them encourage the
advances of men whose past and present should have excluded them from
any decent home--only because these men had money.

My purpose, however, in these remarks is not to discuss the sources or
temptations to impurity, so much as to say a faithful word to young men
about the thing itself. Permit me to counsel you to face the truth and
not to fear it, that past a given age in your life and up to another
the cravings of our lower nature are tremendously strong. If you would
fight the good fight for a clean manhood, make no mistake about the
task that lies before you. These cravings implanted in a healthy man
or woman are in themselves beautiful and right. All turns upon the
control of them. If Nature could have let us off more easily the
conflict would have been less searching; but nothing weaker would have
secured the perpetuation of the race, and all that it involves in
struggle, anxiety, and self-sacrifice.

A young man came to me not long ago to ask for my signature to an
application he was making for a certain position. He told me in a few
words about the years he had given to the fitting of himself for the
place he was seeking, and how anxious he was to get it, because, as he
said, he wanted to be married and to make a home for himself. As he
talked to me there was something so clean that looked out of the eyes
of him, while at the same time he gave me the impression of so modest a
self-efficiency, that my entire sympathy and heartiest good wishes were
won for him. I mention this incident because I want to hint much that
I cannot put into words. As you sight the years of responsibility you
will, if you are wise, prepare yourselves by industry, thought, and
control, with a view to married life; for marriage, among other things,
is the natural, the honourable, and the divine provision for the
legitimate cravings of our nature. Whenever I hear a man speak
sneeringly of marriage, if I have to conclude that he says what he
feels, I may not think him a fool, but I strongly suspect that he is a
blackguard. "He who attacks marriage; he who by word or deed sets
himself to undermine this foundation of our moral society, must settle
the matter with me, and if I do not bring him to reason, then I have
nothing more to do with him." So wrote Goethe, and I echo his