I must follow this question a little, though it leads me aside from the main subject of this chapter. Young boys at school and elsewhere are in constant danger. It is rarely that girls are placed in a position of intimacy with an adult male, except their father or their brothers. The very reverse is the case with boys: they are tended, and when young are washed and bathed, by women servants, their clothes are looked after by women, in sickness they are nursed by women, and in innumerable cases they are brought into much more intimate relations with women than girls are ever brought into with men. I would like to say a great deal more about this danger. The part played by servants in the sexual initiation of boys carelessly left in their charge, and often when they are still children, is much larger than usually is credited. It is folly to close our eyes to the evils that may, and often do, arise. Perhaps in no other matter has the ignorance of mothers worked greater evils or been more culpable than it has been here. Nor is it servants alone that have to be feared in this connection: many boys have been seduced by women, who would be least suspected of such an act. I could give cases from my own knowledge: men, at least, will know that I speak the truth. The facts are ugly, but they may not be overlooked. No mother should be ignorant on these matters. For myself I would trust my little adopted son—he is twelve years old—with no servant and with very few women. This may seem a hard saying, but it is based on a wide knowledge of what happens to many boys. We expose our children to manifold dangers which only now are we coming to understand. We have to accept these things unless we are ready to act. Even if no such great evil happens, much harm may be done by vulgar speech. Beautiful and sacred emotions, marvellous processes of nature, legitimate and essential longings, become associated in the tender expanding mind of the healthy boy with the unseemly, the shameful, and the unclean. Where the child should learn to wonder, he is taught to know shame and to deride. The results are terrible in many cases. It is the mother’s duty and privilege unceasingly to watch her child, but this she can do only if she has knowledge and is wise. It must not be thought that I am unmindful of the many and great difficulties that hinder the actions of parents. Under our present conditions of almost universal concealments, the sexual education of our children is, indeed, so difficult a problem that I am conscious of all manner of obstacles as I attempt to suggest a solution. Of one thing only am I certain: we can no longer leave this matter safely to the hazard of chance.