5. YOUNG WOMEN.--The vast majority of graduates from the schools and colleges of our land to-day, and two-thirds of the membership of our churches, and three-fourths of the charitable workers, are females. Everywhere girls are carrying off most of the prizes in competitive examinations, because women, as a sex, naturally maintain a better character, take better care of their bodies, and are less addicted to bad and injurious habits. While all this is true in reference to females, you will find that the male sex furnishes almost the entire number of criminals. The saloons, gambling dens, the brothels, and bad literature are drawing down all that the public schools can build up. Seventy per cent. of the young men of this land do not darken the church door. They are not interested in moral improvement or moral education. Eighty-five per cent. leave school under 15 years of age; prefer the loafer's honors to the benefit of school. 6. PROMOTION.--The world is full of good places for good young men, and all the positions of trust now occupied by the present generation will soon be filled by the competent young men of the coming generation; and he that keeps his record clean, lives a pure life, and avoids excesses or dissipations of all kinds, and fortifies his life with good habits, is the young man who will be heard from, and a thousand places will be open for his services. 7. PERSONAL PURITY.--Dr. George F. Hall says: "Why not pay careful attention to man in all his elements of strength, physical, mental, and moral? Why not make personal purity a fixed principle in the manhood of the present and coming generations, and thus insure the best men the world has ever seen? It can be done. Let every reader of these lines resolve that he will be one to help do it." * * * * * {416} Immorality, Disease and Death. [Illustration: Charles Dickens' Chair and Desk.] 1. THE POLICY OF SILENCE.--There is no greater delusion than to suppose that vast number of boys know nothing about practices of sin. Some parents are afraid that unclean thoughts may be suggested by these very defences. The danger is slight. Such cases are barely possible, but when the untold thousands are thought of on the other side, who have been demoralized from childhood through ignorance, and who are to-day suffering the result of these vicious practices, the policy of silence stands condemned, and intelligent knowledge abundantly justified. The emphatic words of Scripture are true in this respect also, "The people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."