8
A Solemn Appeal
upon the floor for them, rather than have them lodge with others. I
have tried to keep them from associating with rough, rude boys, and
have presented inducements before them to make their employment at
home cheerful and happy. By keeping their minds and hands occupied,
they have had but little time, or disposition, to play in the street with
other boys, and obtain a street education.
A misfortune, which occurred when I was about nine years old,
ruined my health. I looked upon this as a great calamity, and murmured
because of it. In a few years I viewed the matter quite differently. I
then looked upon it in the light of a blessing. I regard it thus now.
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Because of sickness, I was kept from society, which preserved me
in blissful ignorance of the secret vices of the young. After I was a
mother, by the private death-bed confessions of some females, who
had completed the work of ruin, I first learned that such vices existed.
But I had no just conception of the extent of this vice, and the injury
the health sustained by it, until a still later period.
The young indulge to quite an extent in this vice before the age of
puberty, without experiencing at that time, to any very great degree,
the evil results upon the constitution. But at this critical period, while
merging into manhood and womanhood, nature then makes them feel
the previous violation of her laws.
As the mother sees her daughter languid and dispirited, with but
little vigor, easily irritated, starting suddenly and nervously when spo-
ken to, she feels alarmed, and fears that she will not be able to reach
womanhood with a good constitution. She relieves her, if possible,
from active labor, and anxiously consults a physician, who prescribes
for her without making searching inquiries, or suggesting to the un-
suspecting mother the probable cause of her daughter’s illness. Secret
indulgence is, in many cases, the only real cause of the numerous
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complaints of the young. This vice is laying waste the vital forces,
and debilitating the system; and until the habit, which produced the
result, is broken off, there can be no permanent cure. To relieve the
young from healthful labor, is the worst possible course a parent can
pursue. Their life is then aimless, the mind and hands unoccupied,
the imagination active, and left free to indulge in thoughts that are not
pure and healthful. In this condition they are inclined to indulge still
more freely in that vice which is the foundation of all their complaints.