robbed him, and didn't cure him. You
know how it is, sir."

"Yes, I know," said the doctor.

"Such things ought not to be permitted," cried the old man. "What is
our government about that it allows such things to go on? Take the
conditions there at the college where my poor boy was ruined. At the
very gates of the building these women are waiting for the lads! Ought
they to be permitted to debauch young boys only fifteen years old?
Haven't we got police enough to prevent a thing like that? Tell me,
sir!"

"One would think so," said the doctor, patiently.

"But is it that the police don't want to?"

"No doubt they have the same excuse as all the rest--they don't know.
Take courage, sir; we have cured worse cases than your son's. And some
day, perhaps, we shall be able to change these conditions."

So he went on with the man, leaving George with something to think
about. How much he could have told them about what had happened to that
young fellow when only fifteen years old! It had not been altogether the
fault of the women who were lurking outside of the college gates; it was
a fact that the boy's classmates had teased him and ridiculed him, had
literally made his life a torment, until he had yielded to temptation.

It was the old, old story of ignorant and unguided schoolboys all over
the world! They thought that to be chaste was to be weak and foolish;
that a fellow was not a man unless he led a life of debauchery like the
rest. And what did they know about these dreadful diseases? They had the
most horrible superstitions--ideas of cures so loathsome that they could
not be set down in print; ideas as ignorant and destructive as those
of savages in the heart of Africa. And you might hear them laughing
and jesting about one another's condition. They might be afflicted with
diseases which would have the most terrible after-effects upon their
whole lives and upon their families--diseases which cause tens of
thousands of surgical operations upon women, and a large percentage of
blindness and idiocy in children--and you might hear them confidently
express the opinion that these diseases were no worse than a bad cold!

And all this mass of misery and ignorance covered over and clamped
down by a taboo of silence, imposed by the horrible superstition of
sex-prudery! George went out from the doctor's office trembling with
excitement over this situation. Oh, why had not some one warned him in
time? Why didn't the doctor