Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/206

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table where a young college student was about to submit to a critical operation to alleviate a disease which he had contracted from a prostitute. He was thinking, I know, of the pain which he must endure and of the danger to his life, and looking up into my face he said, having in mind the many fellows to whom I talk every year, "Tell them they always have to pay for it; they always have to pay for it." Through many years of observation on thousands of students I have come to know that the boy's words are true. The clean, continent life is the only safe one, and those young men who think other wise and who gratify their physical passions "pay for it" ultimately in ruined health, and ruined characters, and ruined studies. The student with a clean mind and clean morals has the best chance of winning high scholastic standing. One other thing that you should well keep in mind—some day you are going to have a home of your own; and to take to it the girl whom you have chosen to be your wife. If at that time you can come to her with a body free from the effects of disease and a past life clean and wholesome, you may count the sacrifices of self-control as nothing compared with the satisfaction you will then feel.

In going to college most young fellows find themselves away from the restraints of home for the first time. Fathers and mothers often feel that this sending the boy away from home and putting him in the way of temptation and upon his own responsibility is a danger which they