urgent need of its performance of which
our professional experience has thoroughly convinced us. We cannot keep
our lips closed when our eyes are witnesses to the fact that thousands
of the fairest and best of our girls and maidens are being beguiled
into everlasting ruin by a soul-destroying vice which works unseen,
and often so insidiously that its results are unperceived until the
work of ruin is complete.

The nature of our subject necessitates that we should speak plainly,
though delicately, and we shall endeavor to make our language
comprehensible by any one old enough to be benefited by the perusal
of this chapter. We desire that all who read these pages may receive
lasting benefit by so doing. The subject is one upon which every girl
ought to be informed, and to which she should give serious attention,
at least sufficiently long to become intelligent concerning the evils
and dangers to which girls are exposed from this source.

Girlhood.--Nothing is so suggestive of innocence and purity as the
simple beauty of girlhood when seen in its natural freshness, though
too seldom, now-a-days, is it possible to find in our young girls the
natural grace and healthy beauty which were common among the little
maidens of a quarter of a century ago. The ruddy cheeks and bright eyes
and red lips which are indicative of a high degree of healthy vigor
are not so often seen to-day among the small girls in our public schools
and passing to and fro upon the streets. The pale cheeks, languid eyes,
and almost colorless lips which we more often see, indicate weakly
constitutions and delicate health, and prophesy a short and suffering
life to many. Various causes are at work to produce this unfortunate
decline; and while we hope that in the larger share of cases, bad diet,
improper clothing, confinement in poorly ventilated rooms with too
little exercise, and similar causes, are the active agents, we are
obliged to recognize the fact that there is in far too many cases another
cause, the very mention of which makes us blush with shame that its
existence should be possible. But of this we shall speak again
presently.

Real girls are like the just opening buds of beautiful flowers. The
beauty and fragrance of the full-blossomed rose scarcely exceed the
delicate loveliness of the swelling bud which shows between the
sections of its bursting calyx the crimson petals tightly folded
beneath. So the true girl possesses in her sphere as high