sease eating out
life itself, brought on by a self-abuse of the private organs.
Besides the slow and progressive derangement of his or her health, the
diminished energy of application, the languid movement, the stooping
gait, the desertion of social games, the solitary walk, late rising,
livid and sunken eye, and many other symptoms, will fix the attention
of every intelligent and competent guardian of youth that something is
wrong.

[Illustration: GUARD WELL THE CRADLE. EDUCATION CANNOT BEGIN TOO
YOUNG.]

MARRIED PEOPLE.

Nor are many persons sufficiently aware of the ruinous extent to which
the amative propensity is indulged by married persons. The matrimonial
ceremony does, indeed, sanctify the act of sexual intercourse, but it
can by no means atone for nor obviate the consequences of its abuse.
Excessive indulgence in the married relation is, perhaps, as much
owing to the force of habit, as to the force of the sexual appetite.

EXTREME YOUTH.

More lamentable still is the effect of inordinate sexual excitement of
the young and unmarried. It is not very uncommon to find a confirmed
onanist, or, rather, masturbator, who has not yet arrived at the
period of puberty. Many cases are related in which young boys and
girls, from eight to ten years of age, were taught the method
of self-pollution by their older playmates, and had made serious
encroachments on the fund of constitutional vitality even before any
considerable degree of sexual appetite was developed.

FORCE OF HABIT.

Here, again, the fault was not in the power of passion, but in the
force of habit. Parents and guardians of youth can not be too mindful
of the character and habits of those with whom they allow young
persons and children under their charge to associate intimately, and
especially careful should they be with whom they allow them to sleep.

SIN OF IGNORANCE.

It is customary to designate self-pollution as among the "vices." I
think misfortune is the more appropriate term. It is true, that in the
physiological sense, it is one of the very worst "transgressions of
the law." But in the moral sense it is generally the sin of ignorance
in the commencement, and in the end the passive submission to a morbid
and almost resistless impulse.

QUACKS.

The time has come when the rising generation must be thoroughly
instructed in this matter. That quack specific "ignorance" has been
experimented with quite too long already. The true meth