a lamentable fact, the ill effects
of which are every day seen, that a great many people have spent a very
large portion of their lives without ever ascertaining the true
function of the reproductive organs, though living in matrimony for
many years. Some of the consequences of this ignorance have been
portrayed in previous pages.

"Oh! why did not some kind friend tell me of the harm I was doing myself?"
has been the exclamation of many an unfortunate sufferer from this vice.
A warning voice should be raised to save those who are ignorantly
working their own destruction. Parents, teachers, ministers, all who
have access to the youth, should sound the note of alarm in their ears,
that if possible they may be saved from the terrible thralldom pictured
by a writer in the following lines:--

"The waters have gone over me. But out of the black depths, could I
be heard, I would cry to all those who have set a foot in the perilous
flood. Could the youth look into my desolation, and be made to
understand what a dreary thing it is when a man shall feel himself going
down a precipice with open eyes and passive will--to see his destruction
and have no power to stop it, and yet to feel it all the way emanating
from himself; to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and yet not
be able to forget a time when it was otherwise; to bear about with him
the spectacle of his own self-ruin; could he feel the body of death
out of which I cry hourly with feebler and feebler outcry to be
delivered."

CURATIVE TREATMENT OF THE EFFECTS OF SELF-ABUSE.

When the habit and its effects are of very short duration, a cure is
very readily accomplished, especially in the cases of children and
females, as in them the evils begun are not continued in the form of
involuntary pollutions. In cases of longer standing in males, the task
is more difficult, but still the prospect of recovery is very favorable,
provided the cooperation of the patient can be secured; without this,
little can be done. But in these cases the patient may as well be told
at the outset that the task of undoing the evil work of years of sin
is no easy matter. It can only be accomplished by determined effort,
by steady perseverance in right doing, and in the application of
necessary remedies. Those who have long practiced the vice, or long
suffered severely from its effects, have received an injury which will
inevitably be life-long to a greater or lesser extent in spite of all