Like most children, I began quite early in childhood to ask about my origin, and received answers that were falsehoods. I do not remember just what I was first told, but the replies given did not satisfy my enquiring mind. I eagerly listened to the vulgar stories of servants and schoolmates and before I was twelve years old my mind was taken up with lascivious thoughts and vulgar expressions. Two months before I was thirteen, I was taught how to practice that awful habit, the secret sin. I became a slave to it. I could not stop. In the spring after I was fourteen I was converted. Again I tried, oh so hard, to quit this habit, but I could not. My mind was filled with those ugly words and I could not expel them. This sin is still troubling me and I can’t get rid of it. Oh, I would give anything if I could. Now, I am away from home attending college, and I know that my parents (especially mamma) are worried. They fear that I, being young, and, as they think, ignorant of all these things, may bring disgrace to them. Last winter a friend gave me a book entitled, “Letters of Love to Our Girls,” but mamma and papa hid it. I asked them why they did so. I received the answer, “It is a book that no married person should read, let alone a young girl.” I have a little sister nine years old. For four years she has often asked questions about the origin of animals. When a colt is born or a calf, or kitten, or pigs, she always asks the same question. “Where did Dolly find her colt? Where did Lily find her calf?” etc., and they always put her off with some falsehood. Please advise me how I may be able to rid myself of this habit. Yours in earnest, ---- =I gave her the following advice:= “_Dear Friend:_ Your letter received. In reply, I am glad you had the courage to ask for advice and to state facts so frankly. Your trouble began with your false training in childhood. If you had been taught the sacredness of the sexual organs and their functions, your mind would have been safeguarded against this vice. Instead, you received the very opposite information. Half-truths, clothed in vulgar language, received from the ignorant and vicious, lead naturally to a morbid interest in matters of sex and consequently to a habit of lascivious thinking. Impure thinking causes the blood to rush to the sexual organs. The inflamed and gorged condition, due to this rush of blood to these parts, results in frequent experiences of sex consciousness and passion. This leads very naturally to the handling of the organs of sex.