=A great physical risk.=--For physical reasons a visit to the fallen women would be a hazardous risk. These women are nearly always diseased. In this way young men become diseased and they infect their wives and transmit serious troubles to their children. =Self-respect lost.=--From a moral point of view a visit to the strange woman is wholly inadmissible. You could never wholly recover your self-respect. A young man has no moral right to demand purity of his sweetheart at the marriage altar unless he can offer her a pure life. =Danger of becoming an illegitimate father.=--Finally, through illicit intercourse a young man is constantly in danger of becoming a father. An illegitimate father never loves, feeds, clothes, shelters, educates and trains his own child. Every instinct of nature demands this much of him. The child is blood of his blood, bone of his bone, life of his life; it is as truly his child as if it had been conceived in wedlock. Sin that will so degrade a man as to leave him without sense of honor, justice and right in his relation to his own child certainly has no equal in the catalogue of crime. =The pure man is worthy of a pure wife.=--The young man who keeps himself as pure as a virgin will be worthy of one of God’s queenly women, he will be capable of making her a kingly husband, and, conscious of their dignity, purity and virility, he and his wife will become the happy parents of a brood of fair girls and lusty boys. CHAPTER XXXVIII VENEREAL DISEASES =The bad cold “fallacy.”=--Most boys and young men are disposed to think of venereal diseases as a joke. They often compare them with a bad cold. They are often heard to boast of having had one or more attacks from which they easily recovered. This is due to the fact that these young men have no just conception of the grave consequence of these diseases. =Two principal diseases.=--There are two principal kinds of venereal disease: gonorrhea, in street vernacular known as clap, and syphilis, popularly called pox. These diseases are due to specific disease germs and require a specific treatment. These diseases originate as a result of illicit intercourse, never originating in the married life where husband and wife are true to each other. Sometimes a husband or wife may be infected by accidentally coming in contact with the disease germs by kissing an infected person, the use of public towels, closets, etc. =As old as prostitution.=--Venereal diseases are as old as prostitution. These diseases evidently originated as a result of prostitution. Venereal diseases are known to have been in existence more than 2000 years B.C. All venereal diseases were thought to be one until 1838. These diseases may be acquired by the use of a closet, towel or bath tub previously used by an infected person.