Take Care Of The Boys

[CONCLUSIÓN.] There must necessarily be occasions in business life when men shall be Drought together with men alone and correspondingly will there be social reations between women alone, while their husbands and sons are engaged in their special vocations. But it may be doubtod whether the separation of the sexes in social life further than this necessary one is ever morally wholosome. Women and girls would not, indeed, incur the same porils which beset men and boys. I am now looking after the risks of the boys. It is difficult to conceive a motive for the clubbing together of men, or boys, to the exclusión of the other aex except the wish to do and say that which could only be done and said in such exclusive circles. It may be drinking and smoking ; it maybe the planning and of ques" tionable sports and tricks; it may be loose and libidinous talking. My critica! tastes may be at fault, but I always feel that something is wrong in the man or boy who withdraws from the companionship of the sexes mixed, and seeks only the conclave of his own sex. The natural places for them to spend their evenings are the families to which they belong. These and their callera should be their usual society, varied ot courso by their own calis on other families, where the mutual attractions and restraints of the two sexes opérate to aroduce the true balance in social life. Those brought up in this way would never know any obscene stories to teil and if by chance they should hear onej they could not shape their mouths to re. peat it. The society of men and boys wants it regulator, if the gentier sex is excluded ; I donot,however, fee 1 so certain that the women of a family may not often be chiefly blamablo for ing their huabands, sons and brother to Hoek to other resorts to spend theii' evenings. , This paper is not, indeed, aimed against organized clubs; but rather at the habit of men and boys, organized or not, of seeking their society in clubrooms, shops and streets. And here I may perhaps be permitted to say that I have never in my life, fond as I am of society, gone, except on purely business errands, where my wife, sister or daughter might not have gone with me. The family alone, or this onlarged by callers, or swelled into the more formal party, or the grand reception, forms the basis of all good society. Tho family is its unit. There is peril in the habit of transgressing this limit. Nor did I find it necessary to transgress this during a residence of five years in a Germán .capitol. 1 remember that we had in that city a society called "Die Gesellschaft der feumziger Familien" - "The society of the fifty families." As very few there had houses to entertain such a company, a hall was hired for the purpose; still the family was the unit of the body. Nor was it a beer-drinking assembly. Indeed, I can conceive no revolution in social Ufe whieh would come so near my conception of an earthly paradise as one which should recognize the family as its centre. It might abolish the saloon without a battle. Just to think of the men of a community getting their wives and boys and girls all ready and marehing off with them as wholo familiesjto the saloons ! Another story of this foreign residence is here ventured, perhaps with some risk to my reputation as the total abstainer that I am f rom the use of intoxicants. Typhoids fearfully and fatally prevailed in the city every year during the latter part of winter and early spring, attributed by some to bad water by others te the all-night balls and various exposures oí the carnival season, both of which we re doubtless responsible for their aegravation. Our Germán friends wore greatly concerned for us that we did not drink beer. Tho tirst spring our two children came as near dying with the fever as they could and live. I asked our phyeician about the use of beer and he recommended it as rather required by the climate. But our children dislikod it and we had to do a good deal of coaxing and some hiring to get them to drink each a half-glass daily, while many a brewer drank twenty to thirty quarts a day. This city is built on a gravel-bed of seventeen hundred feet in depth, brought from the Alps during unknown ages by the flow of the Isar. The water used by the people was from wells dug in this loose earth, through which it passed as through a sieve, losing none of the filth which it had taken on from the vaults of the city. Many years later the city had water-works constructed by which the place was supplied from Starnberg Lake, twelve miles distant, and immediately became one of the healthiest cities of Europe. Not beer, but good water wrought the change. It has set me at attempting to concieve the rtvolution which a universal supply of pure water and a return tothe natural home life of the family would effect in the world ! I almost feel like regarding this as foreshadowed in the Apostle 's picture of "a pureriverof water of life" which he saw in the streetof his New Jerusalem. We ought to attempt some approach U it here. I am in favor of tryinsr it. Legislation alone cannot do it, but it may help. But there is yet one danger to youngpeople of both sexes which cannot be overlooked asconnected with going into society of any kind during their school years, except that which is incidental to their studies. They can not go to social gatherings requiring preparation and thought without having these unfit them for study during the week proceding and those following the entertainment, and if they have such a one each week the disturbing influence runs through the whole time and they will fail nv (nat harelv sliu thronsrh their ex- aminations. Dated, Feb. lst, 1896.