PART II.
Boys and Young Men, Their Education and Training.
The evils and dangers of the present system of educating and bringing up the boys of our country are too obvious to require minute description; and yet, startling as are the facts, the remedy is strangely obscure to even the very best thinkers of our time, Irreligion and infidelity are progressing pari passu with the advance guards of immorality and crime, and all are fostered, if not engendered, by the materialistic system of instruction, and the consequent wretched training at home and on the play-ground. The entire absence of all religious instruction from the school-room, which has resulted from the utter impossibility of harmonizing the multiform creeds, and the growing fallacy of "refraining from prejudicing the minds of our children in favor of any particular system of theology until they are able to think and choose for themselves," are fast bearing fruit in a generation of infidels, and we are becoming worse even than the pagans of old, who had, at least, their positive sciences of philosophy, and their religion such as it was, to oppose which was a criminal offense. To those who would dispute this somewhat horrible assertion, the author would point to the published statistics of church attendance, from which it appears that of the entire population but a very small proportion are habitual church-goers. Deducting from these again those who attend church simply as a matter of fashion, or from other than religious motives, and there remains a minimum almost too small to be considered, abundantly sustaining our charge. The disintegration of the prevalent forms of religious belief, the rapid multiplication of sects, the increase in the ranks of intellectual skeptics, the fashionable detractions from, and perversions of, the Holy Scriptures, acting with the influences already mentioned, may well cause alarm.
The boy of the present generation has more practical knowledge of sexual instinct at the age of fifteen than, under proper training, he should be entitled to at the time of his marriage; and the boy of eleven or twelve boastfully announces to his companions the evidences of his approaching virility. Nourished by languishing glances and fanned by more intimate association on the journey to and from school, fed by stolen interviews and openly arranged festivities, stimulated by the prurient gossip of the news-paper and the flash novel, the gallant of twelve years is the libertine of fourteen. That this picture is not overdrawn every experienced physician will bear witness. Revelations are rare; instances of detection are extremely infrequent; so liberal are the opportunities afforded, and so blind are those whose duty it should be to guard. We boldly proclaim that the roues among boys outnumber the onanists by thousands, and that, destructive and revolting as is the latter vice, it is even more tolerable to contemplate than the other. The one, if persevered in, must reveal itself; the other keeps secret its hidden transactions. The one wrecks body and mind; the other grows and fattens to invest the subtlest of demons. The writer could engage to select the onanists of a school by a walk among the pupils; he could not promise so much for the young Lotharios. Indeed, if he could, and it were to be made a cause of expulsion, he fears there would be but a slender attendance in any school thus vised. Onanism, though called the solitary vice, is essentially gregarious in its origin. It is, indeed, by unrestrained intercourse with each other that boys are taught and encouraged to pursue this destructive practice. From false notions of delicacy, with a prudery as astonishing as it is criminal, the parents and guardians of boys refrain from all allusion to the subject, while in their hearts they must realize the imminence of the danger. Ready and willing to acknowledge it in the abstract, they seem to feel, and certainly they act, as though some special immunity were granted to their own proteges. Thus it happens that a boy contracts a habit, which, discovered too late, is well-nigh unconquerable in its thraldom, as it is formidable in its sad results, and which a few earnest, timely words would have surely prevented.
We charge then that the present system of education, by its faults of omission and commission, is directly responsible, not, it is true, for the bare existence, but for the enormous prevalence of vices and crimes which we here deplore, and we call upon the civil authorities to so modify the obnoxious arrangements of our schools, and upon parents and guardians to so instruct and govern their charges, that the evils may be suppressed if not extinguished. By the former this has been measurably effected in isolation of the sexes; by the latter, it may be, in encouraging the confidence and preparing the minds of boys for the great physiological crisis and its consequent dangers, whose advent they can easily and surely discern. In many instances the requisite instruction and counsel may be best imparted by the family physician, who can be consulted for the purpose; and there is no reputable physician who will not undertake the task with both prudence and alacrity, while from such a source the words have an importance and authority which few parents can command. The boy's intercourse with his fellows and with servants should be closely watched and always suspected. Many, alas! have received their first lessons in immorality or crime from the hostler or the cook, while a single night with a strange bed-fellow may initiate a boy in mysteries to which he had else remained a stranger. This last danger is greatly increased if the casual room-mate be by a few years his senior; for the power of mischief possessed by the older boy is increased in proportion to his size, and, alas! his experience. If a boy be an onanist he is sure to corrupt the smaller boys of his acquaintance whenever a safe opportunity presents itself, and thus children of six and twelve fall victims of those of twelve and eighteen.
At the age of six, states a physician in describing his own case, he was allowed to attend an evening party with his sister, many years his senior, for the purpose of taking part in some tableaux. A violent storm compelled several to pass the night with our entertainers and he occupied the same bed with a young gentleman of seventeen. On that occasion a lesson of vice was imparted, whose import was then unknown, but whose impression was indelible.
Another case, of a writer who states : At the age of eight he was lodged, at a watering place, in the same room with three girls, respectively ten, twelve, and fourteen years of age. The elder of these little misses succeeded effectually, during the few weeks' association, in inducting her companions into the science of reproduction, while the male member of the quartet was aptly used in illustration of the subject. The matronly dignity with which this lady now chaperones her young daughters in the most fashionable circles of one of our most fashionable cities, does not, he says, in the least diminish the feelings of hostility with which he, as one of her pupils regards her, and which the publication of this anecdote is the first opportunity afforded him to gratify. His secrecy during his involuntary pupilage, was not the result of an innate sense of wrong or shame, but was induced solely by the subtle representations of his seductress.
The custom of permitting children of different sexes to sleep in the same bed, or in the same room, is surprisingly common in this country, even where the excuse of poverty is wanting. The mere matter of convenience, or of innocent solicitation is often deemed sufficient to warrant a practice which can have but disastrous results, if nothing more comes of it than undue familiarity with the differences of organization. It is astonishing what small credit we give these little people for powers of observation and comparison, while the least intimation of the possession of them, by the wondering query of word or look, is frowned down or rudely checked, with no sufficient explanation of its impropriety. Instances are by no means rare, of girls sleeping with their younger brothers long after womanhood, and the fashion is to retort upon those who remonstrate with the parent, "Evil to him that evil thinks." It is a truth, proven by the experience of ages, that separation of the sexes should begin early, at least at four or five years, for the impressions of early childhood are the most ineradicable of life. Concupiscence, though the strongest and most injurious, is far from being the only passion needlessly and wrongfully developed in boys; those of cupidity, extravagance, dishonesty, and faithlessness are notable. "Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined," is a homely adage, inclosing a deal of Gospel truth, which it is nowadays the fashion to ignore almost as completely as Solomon's aphorism, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." With every allowance for the vast differences in temperament and disposition, we believe the statement axiomatic, that parents are strictly responsible, before God, for the confirmed vices of their children. The punishment meted out to young offenders for drunkenness, stealing, and the like, might too often be more advantageously inflicted upon the really guilty parties, the neglectful parents; and the secret of this truism is precisely the fact that the proclivities of the individual are developed very early. Thus a boy in whom lying seems a part of his very nature is morally certain, if every inch of ground be not vigorously contested, and the habit early eradicated, to become an adult knave. The writer knows of a case of two brothers in whom the opposite qualities of unimpeachable veracity and utter mendacity were fully apparent as early as the fourth and sixth years, yet, by indomitable care and patience, they are now, at the ages of ten and twelve, equally models of irreproachable honor. Innumerable remonstrances, whippings, and privations were vainly tried upon the little reprobate, until a plaster covering the mouth, and duly perforated to admit of respiration (but not of falsehoods), proved specific in a very few applications; so a habit which else had ruined the man was easily uprooted in the boy. A placard announcing "thief," not exhibited beyond the nursery, may do as much for one who manifests an early tendency to kleptomania. The vices of cupidity and extravagance may be early cured by opposite lessons, and great patience and ceaseless observation are required to accomplish a radical cure in either case, but, nevertheless, it can and should be done. Many an avaricious monster may thank his doting parents for the qualities which render him odious, and which were ineradicably fixed upon him in childhood by encouragement of his miscalled "cuteness," while the ruined spendthrift may live to curse the "fond parental ass" for his undue indulgence of mere childish lavishness. Not long since we were quietly examining a little patient, who, not relishing the process, struck us in the face. The mother took the matter as an excellent joke; not so the author, who indulged in the unpleasant reflection that the germ of a possible murderer was being carefully nourished in that fashionable "south front." These fits of rage on the part of little boys, are often foolishly encouraged, or at least quietly regarded as "marks of spirit" and very "comical." So they are in babies; they are terrible in men.
Most vices are only distorted virtues, and the very elements we have so much occasion to dread, are, when properly directed, so many sources of excellence. Positive qualities are of slow growth, and, whether good or evil, they invariably date back to the nursery. Crime, then, may be restricted within very narrow limits, and by proper management, may be banished from good society and monopolized by those who, like Topsy, "only growed."
It will be readily perceived, from what has been already said, that the transition of Young America from boy to man is too brief to be separately considered. The habits acquired at school are perfected in the university or the counting-room. For good or for evil they go on ripening in these arenas, and bear fruit in the hosts of skeptics, infidels, and libertines now crowding our land.