brothels!
In a private interview with me he admitted all this, and told me that
he was corrupted at ten years of age, when he was sent, after
convalescence from scarlet fever, to a country village for three
months. There he seems to have associated with a group of street boys,
who gave him such information as they had, and initiated him into
self-abuse. Since then he had been greedily seeking further
information and passing it on.

_Case B._--A delicate, gentle boy of eleven, an only son, was sent to
me by an intellectual father, who had been his constant companion. The
lad was very amiable and well-intentioned. A year later he gave me
particulars of his corruption by a cousin, who was three years older
than he. Since that time--particularly of late--he had practised
masturbation. He had not the least idea that it was hurtful or even
unrefined, and thought that it was peculiar to himself and his
cousin. He knew from his cousin the chief facts of maternity and
paternity, but had not spoken to other boys about them. He was
intensely anxious to cleanse himself entirely, and promised to let me
know of any lapse, should it occur. In the following vacation he
developed pneumonia. For some days his life hung in the balance, and
then flickered out. His father wrote me a letter of noble resignation.
Terribly as he felt his loss, he was greatly consoled, he said, by the
knowledge that his boy had died while his mind was innocent and before
he could know even what temptation was. It is needless to add that I
never hinted the real facts to the father; and--without altering any
material detail--I am disguising the case lest it should possibly be
recognised by him. I have often wondered whether, when the lad's life
hung in the balance, it might not have been saved if Death's scale had
not been weighted by the child's lowered vitality.

_Case C._--A boy of fourteen came to me. He was a miserable specimen
in every way--pale, lethargic, stupid almost beyond belief. He had no
mother; and the father, though a man of leisure, evidently found it
difficult to make the lad much of a companion. I felt certain from the
first that the boy was an exceptionally bad victim of self-abuse; And
this I told his father, advising him to investigate the matter. He was
horrified at my diagnosis, and committed the great indiscretion of
taxing the boy with self-abuse as though it were a conscious and
grave fault. The father wrote during the vacation sayin