A Solemn Appeal - James White

parties to kill each other or themselves? Little do
we realize how many are dying continually around
us from this sole cause. How and why this proves
thus injurious, we shall see hereafter.
"Would that we could here end this painful
chapter. Its worst, because most common, form
still remains untold. We refer to SELF-ABUSE.
You look surprised. "A false alarm," you
exclaim. "Impossible!" But put it to any numerical
test you please. Catechise promiscuously every boy
you meet, and then say if nine in every ten, from
eleven years old and upwards, and half, from seven
to eleven, do not practice more or less? Many who
deny in words, own up in deed by the shame
manifested--a sure sign of guilt. Of those still
older, the proportion is greater yet. Question the
keepers of our hospitals for bad boys and poor
children. A friend took a boy about ten years old
from an asylum for poor and orphan children, and
finding that he took every opportunity, when alone,
to perpetrate this filthy practice, chastised him
often and severely, but to no purpose, and finally
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