Ideas For Boys | Page 9

squandering more money and wasting more and more time, and if you persist, it may result in failure in your college work, and in disgrace from which it will take you a long time to recover. Keep away from the gamblers in college, for gambling often becomes a mania with some persons, and you may be one of them.

INTOXICATION.
You are the occupant of your human machine. While you are in a normal condition your mind has complete control over the movements of your body, but if you take a strong drink of whiskey, or other intoxicants, or certain drugs, your brain and nerves are at once affected, your judgment becomes impaired and you lose control of your human machine, and while you are in this condition, even for a short time, almost anything may happen to your human machine, you may lose an arm or a leg or commit some act from which you may never recover. Many accidents and most crimes result from strong drink. It can do you no good it injures the stomach and burns up the cells of the brain. The drink habit causes men to lose confidence in the drinker, because he cannot be relied upon at critical times. Many a fine fellow has been started on a downward career by learning to drink in college, which has resulted in his utter failure in life. Most of the tramps and down and outs, are where they are, because of the drink habit acquired in youth. The risk is too great for you to fool with it. Therefore have the courage to say No to anyone who asks you to take a drink of intoxicating liquor while you are in college. If you never start to drink you will have one less evil to overcome.
If you have not sufficient control over yourself to resist "social drinking" then either keep away from college, or attend a college which is located in a "dry" community.

TOBACCO.
Leave tobacco alone while you are a growing boy, it is a narcotic containing some poison, it can't do you any good, and it will do you some harm. Smoking stunts the proper development of the lungs, it will hold you back in athletic sports. Your mind will be better if you don't smoke, and so will your power of endurance. Just because some other fellows smoke, is no reason why you should acquire the habit. Wait until you have attained your full physical development and until you are through college, then if you want to smoke you will be old enough to decide whether you should do so or not.

IMMORAL WOMEN.
Keep away from an immoral woman shun her as you would a rattlesnake she will do you more harm. She is a fallen woman, a degenerate and an outcast; she is filled with disease and will infect you if she gets the chance ; from this one mistake you may never recover, and you may transmit the disease to your child or children, if you should have the power thereafter to be the father of one. Keep clean and free from bad habits. Remember, Oh Youth ! that God has given you reproductive organs for one purpose only, which is the reproduction of the human species when you have married. If you violate this law of nature you will surely pay the penalty of impaired health, strength and mentality.
A well known physician has written the following:
"The observance of a like standard of morals for men and women, and the public recognition by society at large of nature's inexorable decree, that physical and moral hygiene must be identical for the two sexes, if the health and vigor of the nation shall continue. Full knowledge that certain diseases which are now recognized as factors in depopulating civilized nations, and are widespread in our own America, appear to be the most certainly prevented by one means the education of our women in the necessity of demanding of their husbands, sons and friends, lives as clean as their own, and therefore as free from the likelihood of transmitting disease. * * *
"That it is the consensus of opinion among physicians in America and throughout the world, that illicit intercourse is neither necessary nor advantageous to the health and vigor of any male or female, on the contrary it renders the individual liable to dangers that immediately assail the integrity of the home, and the health and welfare of the community at large. * * *
"No youth is to be alarmed at nocturnal phenomena on the ground that they will cost him dear. The extent of the loss thus involved, if it be determined wholly by internal causes and in the absence of previous habits which have thrown the whole neuro chemical mechanism out of order, is wholly