I was thinking to myself and did not realize the silence of Mr. Jasper. He then continued: “Such was my home and early training. I was kept from bad company, ‘tied to my mother’s apron string,’ as the boys said, but it was a good string, one of the best that God ever made. One incident occurred when I was in my sixteenth year that left a profound impression on my mind and on my life. A neighbor’s wife and her son—he was just my age to a day—had lately returned from a visit to a distant place where he had met some young people with whom I was slightly acquainted. “We were in their drawing room and the mother was sewing or reading. Mention was made of a young man several years older than we were. At his name the mother remarked, ‘How sad it was! He was a young man of good family, fine ability and excellent prospects, but he had gone with bad women, became diseased and so offensive that his family could not endure his presence but had to provide him rooms outside the house.’ I do not remember her exact words. She was a refined, educated, Christian lady, and I know must have spoken on such a subject with as much delicacy as possible. I was absolutely ignorant of such things. Some might say I was a very innocent youth. I proudly bear the taunt. Such was the effect of her remarks upon me, that I went home sick with disgust and could eat no dinner. “That feeling has never left me. Whenever in my travels I have seen a prostitute, I have had the same feelings of disgust, and when meeting men whom I knew to be licentious I would have as quickly taken a slimy toad in my hand as to have shaken hands with them. Laying aside all the morality of the subject, I never could appreciate the exquisite, refined taste of a gentleman or any man who had any self respect, who could associate with women common to everybody. And what puzzles me now is how any man belonging to a Christian church and professing to be a follower of Jesus, who was purity itself, can be guilty of sexual immorality. They are foul hypocrites, and besides, traitors to Jesus as much as Judas was. “That lady’s talk gave me a shock that has lasted as a blessing all my life. I have often wondered why parents, ministers and teachers, should have such false modesty about these most important things to the young. They say nothing until the youth falls into the mire and slime of the ditches of sin, and then hold up their hands in holy horror and wonder how it could have happened.”