of the ways common to fashionable life.

SOLITARY VICE.

If illicit commerce of the sexes is a heinous sin, self-pollution, or
masturbation, is a crime doubly abominable. As a sin against nature,
it has no parallel except in sodomy (see Gen. 19:5, Judges 19:22). It
is the most dangerous of all sexual abuses, because the most extensively
practiced. The vice consists in any excitement of the genital organs
produced otherwise than in the natural way. It is known by the terms,
self-pollution, self-abuse, masturbation, onanism, manustupration,
voluntary pollution, solitary or secret vice, and other names
sufficiently explanatory. The vice is the more extensive because there
are no bounds to its indulgence. Its frequent repetition fastens it
upon the victim with a fascination almost irresistible. It may be begun
in earliest infancy, and may continue through life.

Even though no warning may have been given, the transgressor seems to
know, instinctively, that he is committing a great wrong, for he
carefully hides his practice from observation. In solitude he pollutes
himself, and with his own hand blights all his prospects for both this
world and the next. Even after being solemnly warned, he will often
continue this worse than beastly practice, deliberately forfeiting his
right to health and happiness for a moment's mad sensuality.

Alarming Prevalence of the Vice.--The habit is by no means confined
to boys; girls also indulge in it, though, it is to be hoped, to a less
fearful extent than boys, at least in this country. A Russian physician,
quoted by an eminent medical professor in New York, states that the
habit is universal among girls in Russia. It seems impossible that such
a statement should be credible; and yet we have not seen it contradicted.
It is more than probable that the practice is far more nearly universal
everywhere than even medical men are willing to admit. Many young men
who have been addicted to the vice, have, in their confessions, declared
that they found it universal in the schools in which they learned the
practice.

Dr. Gardner speaks of it as "the secret cause of much that is perverting
the energies and demoralizing the minds of many of our fairest and
best." He further says:--

"Much of the worthlessness, lassitude, and physical and mental
feebleness attributable to the modern woman are to be ascribed to these
habits as their initial cause." "Foreigners are especially struck with
th