irtues as a secret preference of
their own, and do not consider that it is in the least necessary to
interfere with the practice of others or even to disapprove of it." He
further gives it as his opinion that "The deadly and insidious
temptation of impurity has, as far as one can learn, increased," and
tells us "An innocent-minded boy whose natural inclination to purity
gave way before perpetual temptation and even compulsion might be
thought to have erred, but would have scanty, if any, expression of
either sympathy or pity from other boys; while if he breathed the
least hint of his miserable position to a master and the fact came
out, he would be universally scouted.... One hears of simply
heart-rending cases where a boy dare not even tell his parents of what
he endures." It would thus appear that in some of the premier schools
of the world impurity is a matter of notoriety, sometimes of
compulsion; and that, to a boy's own strong inclination to
concealment, is superadded, by the public opinion of the school, an
imperious command that this concealment shall, even in heart-rending
cases, be maintained.

No one, I think, will maintain that private schools _as a class_ are
in the least degree lees corrupt than public schools; while there are,
I am sure, at least a few schools in which public opinion condemns
_open_ impurity, and will not tolerate impure talk. And while I am
confident that it is possible, not merely to attain this condition in
a school, but also to reduce private impurity to a negligible
quantity, impurity--in one form or another--is, in general, so widely
spread in boys' schools of every type, that it is difficult to
understand how anyone familiar with school life can doubt its
prevalence.

Let us now consider the opinion of Dr. Clement Dukes, the medical
officer of Rugby School and the greatest English authority on school
hygiene. In the preface to the fourth edition of his well-known work
_Health at School_, Dr. Dukes writes: "I have studied children in all
their phases and stages for many years--two years at the Hospital for
Sick Children in 61 Ormond Street, London, followed by thirty-three
years at Rugby School--a professional history which has provided me
with an almost unique experience in all that relates to the Health and
Disease of Childhood and Youth, and has compelled constant and steady
thought upon every aspect of this problem." In an earlier work, _The
Preservation of Health_, Dr. Dukes