This is his first attempt at self-abuse. And it is rightly called self-abuse, for it is an abuse of a boy’s greatest power――manhood, muscle-force, brain-health. I know that some of your teachers and parents will object to my telling you that a few mistakes in boyhood will not ALWAYS ruin you. All the fakers and Quacks will certainly object, for the truth will drive them out of business. But I intend giving you the truth in these matters. It is the only way for you to start right and know how to keep right. I have no patience with those who would build up a great scare for you when young to have you find out later that it was only a warning but not the real facts. I am going to hit out from the shoulder in this matter; no feints or ducking in going at the truth. I have seen hundreds of men and youths complete nervous wrecks from fear that the few times they practiced self-abuse when boys, meant that they were doomed to go to the asylum or death. And all this misery and often a missing of good opportunities in life, were due to the fact that they were told hobgoblin stories which remained with them and rose to frighten them at the most sensitive age in life――early manhood. No more of this wrong treatment should be allowed. If these boys of the past generation had been told how to care for their sex organs, as you have, more than one-half would never have succumbed even once to the temptation of self-abuse. Those of you who have not had proper instruction in the care of the sex organs and felt the irritation so much that you relieved yourselves, don’t think about the past; don’t worry, don’t read the scare-books and the advertisements of the Quacks. Keep a clean body and a clean mind. But you cannot keep a clean mind if you allow the accumulation of secretions to remain anywhere in your system. The mind can be cleaned just as well as the bowels or penis. You can flush the brain so that nothing but pure thoughts and right thinking flow through it. This is done by good reading, good desires and a constant study of yourself and what certain impulses mean. Evil impulses WILL get into the brain; flush them out. Look ahead, never backward. No man ever succeeded in life by looking behind himself. Look forward in all things. Don’t worry and work yourself ill by remembering the time when you did give way to the desire; just try to think of the times ahead that you will NOT.