So many of us hang about the child’s mind, in a timid sort of way, hesitating to go in. We look up at the windows, we peep through the letter-box, we try the back door, we ring the bell very gently――the left-hand bell, which is marked Servants; we dare not ring the visitors’ bell, nor ply the knocker. And the child, all the while, is expecting us. We wait for opportunities. It is probable, with some children, that we ought to make them, not wait for them. I do not altogether like the word “initiate”; yet I have in my imagination some special day set and appointed for a grave little home-ceremony; the whole thing well thought out, the exhortation written down beforehand, every word of it. The occasion of telling boys and girls the truth about their bodily nature would thus be made solemn and memorable, as an act of their lives. I have been reading again that scene in _Tom Brown’s Schooldays_, where the Squire gives his parting advice to Tom, on the way to Rugby. It is one of the hundred best things in one of the hundred best books. Only, all boys and girls are not alike: there is need, with some of them, of saying more than the Squire said. Perhaps a birthday would afford a good opportunity. And, of course, it ought to be done at home: it ought to be done by the child’s parents. Most of us here, when we were 14 or 15 years old, were confirmed, and received the Holy Communion. It was a little time of quiet self-judgment and good resolutions; it really did help us. If I could have my life back, I should like to be told about my bodily nature in that devout and premeditated way. It ought to be done at home, and my father ought to do it, probably on my birthday. Instead of that, it was done by another boy, at a preparatory school. I still remember the exact words that we used, and I could still find almost the very paving-stone on which I was standing. There are things to be said to children; and there are things to be said to older boys and girls going out into the world. I cannot fix the right ages for it: no two children are alike. I feel, also, that first-rate school teachers are more likely than second-rate parents to say the right thing to children. There is a place, doubtless, in school teaching, for lessons in botany and in natural history. The trouble is, that some of the children may fail to see what you are driving at. You can lead them to the very edge of the stream of analogy, but you cannot make them drink. They may remain, at the last moment, recalcitrant; and you may never get quite so far as to tell them what you were intending to tell them.