The father slept in the same bed with his two sons until they were well along in the teens. For as long as he can remember, A found the touch of his father very pleasant, though the touch of his brother was repugnant. A’s strong hostility against his brother, based on their rivalry for the affections of the father, received a certain justification in the critical episode which occurred as his older brother, who matured early, approached puberty and began to have emissions. The preacher was horrified, for he took this as a sign of masturbation, and masturbation was sinful and dangerous.[31] When he thought that A was sound asleep, he would gravely lecture the older boy on the evil consequences of self-abuse. Sometimes the son would wake up in the morning and discover that an emission had taken place during the night. In a hushed and contrite whisper he would say to his father, “I’ve gone and done it again!” at which the parent would exclaim reproachfully, “Oh!” The boy was presently taken to a physician who seems to have modified the excitement of the father and in some measure to have reassured the son that his manhood was not irreparably lost. Dark rumors about self-abuse were whispered through the village from time to time. The neighborhood idiot was supposed to have brought idiocy upon himself by self-abuse, and a bachelor in the village who went insane was supposed to have suffered from the same vice. A listened to the rumors and to the nocturnal dialogues between his father and elder brother, and gathered that ominous things were connected with handling one’s self. He felt ashamed of his brother, who brought so much suffering on his father, and silently determined never to be a disappointment to his father. The tag end of a biblical passage about bringing the gray hairs of his father to the grave in shame ran through his mind, and he resolved never to repeat his brother’s weaknesses. A’s older brother surprised everybody about this time by suddenly changing from a phlegmatic lad into a fervent religious enthusiast. He became converted under dramatic circumstances and joined the church, thus propitiating the unknown powers which might visit horrible punishment upon him for his private iniquities. In this he was running true to the adolescent pattern. Adolescence is notoriously the time when the temptations of the “flesh” multiply and when many youths, oppressed by their “animal” impulses, seek to escape from the burden of guilt by adopting the ceremonial patterns provided in the religious observances of society. Adolescence is so often a period of high ideals, which are typically reaction formations to “low desires,” that adolescence is the happy hunting ground for proselyters of every breed.