With juvenile smoking the case is different. Without the thought of offending the adult smoker or defending adult smoking, we may say with a high degree of certainty that the use of tobacco is extremely hurtful to growing boys. It weakens and deranges the organic processes, leaves its deleterious effects in the throat, eyes, and lungs, and breaks down the natural constitutional defense so essential in time of such diseases as pneumonia and typhoid fever. On the mental side, tobacco lessens the boy's ability to study. Very wide investigations have shown that the habitual smokers among school boys rank low in scholarship; that they are prone to fail in their classes and quit the schools; that almost none of them take high rank as students. The moral effects are even worse. In times of temptation the young boy who smokes is more inclined to yield and to choose the worse form of conduct instead of the better. He lacks especially that fine sense of inner worth so necessary for the one who would succeed in arousing his own moral courage sufficiently to withstand the temptations that naturally beset young life. The rural parents will not of course despair about the boy or turn against him should they discover that he has secretly become confirmed in the use of tobacco. There are still possibilities of his development into a substantial character; but because of his smoking the problem becomes a much more involved and difficult one. All that has just been said in reference to tobacco may be emphasized many fold in respect to intoxicants. To allow a growing boy to begin the use of intoxicating drink in any form seems to be wholly indefensible. However, if there are open saloons in the adjoining town or city, even the best country boys are always somewhat in danger of taking the first false step. Rural parents must not be satisfied with the thought that their boy is "too good" to take up such a thing; they must be assured that he is not doing so. Now, the only way to obtain such assurance is by means of keeping in intimate touch with the boy and his movements--by knowing when and where he goes, why he goes there, and whom he meets in the various places visited on his rounds. Thus, he may be saved from a life of debauch and degradation, and that by means of providing carefully that he reach his full maturity of mind and body without any knowledge of the taste of intoxicating drinks. A CENTER OF COMMUNITY LIFE