=Boys do not know that it will hurt them.=--Very early in life some boys learn to handle the sexual organs so as to produce a sense of pleasure. Not one in a hundred has been told that this habit will injure him. They have an idea that this will make them men. You will some day, if you have not already, hear boys boasting of committing this sin; or they will want to teach it to you. These poor ignorant fellows have not been taught that it is wrong and will injure them. They are to be pitied. They need a friend that will take them off, one at a time, and have a friendly talk with them. You may some time have a chance to give such advice. Where a boy will not take your advice, it is not safe to make him your companion. =The habit is often commenced early.=--Many boys begin this habit before they are twelve, sometimes as early as five and six. They have watched young men and boys older than themselves. They do not know that the glands do not begin the secretion of this energy until after they are fourteen to fifteen. They try to follow the example of older boys. While there is no waste of sexual material, it injures the nerves and pollutes the mind and starts a habit that, unless stopped in the early teens, will be hard to break off from later. Usually when a boy gets to be fourteen his conscience begins to tell him that the habit is wrong. Fortunately, many boys quit at this age, some check themselves, others go recklessly on to their certain ruin. When a boy breaks from the habit at fourteen or fifteen, this new energy soon overcomes the bad effects of the habit. If he continues until he is a young man, eighteen or twenty, he will have a harder struggle to break from the habit, and it will require a longer period for nature to overcome the bad effects of the habit. Boys who go on through life practicing the habit never amount to much and in many cases shorten their lives. =How to keep from the habit.=--I hope you have never formed the habit. It is not necessary to do so. It is far wiser never to commit the sin. If you will keep your hands off your sexual organs, refuse to let your mind entertain impure thoughts, your lips to speak vulgar words, your ears to listen to obscene stories, your eyes to look upon impure pictures, you can master your passions, be pure and clean.