A very intelligent girl from South Dakota writes this heart story: "My mother died when I was a babe. After her death I was sent out among strangers. While away from home and before I was _six_ years old a young fellow about fifteen years old possessed me and threatened to do something terrible to me if I told. I did not dare tell. Luckily I was taken home at that time, as I now had a step-mother. But still more horrible, it also happened that I had immoral relations with my brother. When I found out that this was the way people got babies, I wished I could get one. I was not very old before I understood that this was a wrong and a shame and acted accordingly. My parents never mentioned things of this nature to me. How much better it would have been if they had done so when we were real young. How many things were spoken of by schoolmates and told in the dirtiest possible way and things also were said that I now know were entirely wrong." I cannot impress upon you too strongly the need of early talks with young children on these matters. As soon as they enter school at the age of six and even before this, in some cases, they are bound to hear these things from their playmates. Usually the information is thrust upon the child in a very vulgar manner, or entirely wrong impressions are given. The very secrecy that always has surrounded these subjects makes them an object of interest to children. The functions of the generative organs are just as natural a process as the process of digestion. We make no secret of the process of digestion, and children do not manifest any morbid curiosity regarding it. If we would discuss the functions of the generative organs in just as natural a way, many of our great problems would right themselves. A woman in one of the western states writes, "Once I had a heated argument upon that subject with another woman. She always had lived in a small community. In her opinion all city girls were morally depraved. She had two daughters of her own. Both girls gave birth to babies at the age of fourteen and sixteen years. It transpired later that these girls first began the evil practice at school. And I will state here, regardless of contradiction, that the village school is often the breeder of immoral characters among both boys and girls.