This should be so faithfully taught to the growing child, and all words and conduct in home and Christian social life should be so under the control of this principle, and he should be so taught those habits of social intercourse which will protect him from premature and unhealthy thought, that he shall be able to grow up to the time of his own home-making untrammeled by the entanglements of unhallowed associations and their distracting memories. Here again the boundaries of safety are marked by things which seem trivial. The social world counts it as “bad form” for young people to even shake hands upon introduction, because it has found out to its shame and disgrace that there is danger in a hand-shake; and I am free to say that this social extreme is better than the freedom which sometimes obtains, because by that the young people become practised in a looseness of conduct which opens the way for trouble. “Good form” toned down from the extreme rigidity of the social world, so as to meet the requirements of ordinary Christian intercourse, would teach that the hand-shake should be just what its name indicates—a clasp, a shake, and then a _drop_. Teach your son that he should never place any lady in the embarrassing position of having her hand _crushed_, or _held_ one second; for if she has been properly taught, she will be sure that he is either ignorant, careless, or ungentlemanly in so doing; and if she is herself ignorant and careless, if she is weak enough to allow her hand to be held, she is in a condition where she needs to be protected from herself; and your son should be able to be that protector. Teach your daughter that if any man clings to her fingers when she has given him her hand in friendly, cordial fashion, if he takes the liberty of placing his other hand under her elbow, or taking hold of her arm, that it is her privilege and duty to teach him that he has committed a breach of good manners by withdrawing her hand, forcibly if she must, and stepping out of his reach. And any young man who is worthy of her friendship will in his heart thank her for the rebuke, and profit by it. Many a boy who has grown up in a family of sisters, and among their friends, has, in going out into the world, had to suffer over and over such tortures of chagrin and shame as were almost unendurable before he could learn those little things in “good form” which should have been taught him by precept and example in his home from childhood; and for a lack of the right teaching in this “hand-to-hand” relation, many a boy has been taken captive by shameless women, simply because he practised in the wider and more wicked world the free habits which were common in the neighborhood life at home, which, while neither right nor safe there, were not absolutely dangerous, because each knew everybody, and all were held to respectability by the short rein of close social relations.