“Why, Ma?” he demanded in panic. “Because all such things are vile and dirty and filthy and horrible! Little boys who think them don’t go to heaven and have angels love them. They go to the Bad Place and are burned in fire forever and ever. You know how it hurt when you burnt your finger on my flatiron yesterday? Imagine you were burnt all over your body like that—and there was no way to stop it and you just had to suffer terribly with never a moment to sleep or forget. That’s what happens to bad little boys who say such things or even think them!” “But why is it bad, Ma? Billy didn’t mean to be bad. We just wondered, that’s all. I can’t help thinking about ’em, can I?” “Oh, what a wicked, wicked little boy! Your dear mother will be up in heaven and she won’t have any little son with her. Her little son will be down in the fires of hell—burning for always and always!” The Forge woman pictured eternal torment so vividly that Nathan grew hysterical. When the woman had the boy worked into such a state that he was too terrified to stay alone in the dark because of the devils waiting to grab him, she made him promise never to think about girls or women or babies again. Sniveling, the little shaver promised. His mother went to her bedroom and narrated the affair to her husband. Johnathan was for thrashing the boy soundly at once. “No—you’ve given him one whipping to-day and one whipping a day is enough. I think I’ve scared him so badly that he won’t think of the subject again. And to-morrow I shall certainly see Billy’s mother. If she doesn’t chastise her dirty-minded young one, I shan’t let Nathan go on playing with him.” Grumbling, John Forge was persuaded. Next day Mrs. Forge went into indignant session with my mother. “Yes, Billy catechised me in the same way,” the latter responded. “I told him what I thought it sane and reasonable to tell a lad of his years. He’ll learn it outside, anyway. Probably he’ll get a sordid, vulgar, perverted version. I don’t believe you can scare these things from the minds of live-wire children, nor stifle the most normal impulses of growing boyhood. I for one shan’t try. As my boy grows I want him to feel that he can come to his mother at any time with his problems, especially his girl problems, without having the immortal daylights scared out of him or made to feel that he’s a criminal. It ain’t natural, Anna Forge, and so it ain’t common sense.” “My boy shall not go on playing with yours, if that’s the sort of thing they’re talking.” “Suit yourself, Anna Forge. I believe your philosophy’s wrong and you’ll live to rue it.” “I don’t have to be told what’s decent for my own young one!” “Maybe you do and maybe you don’t. That’s yet to be proven.”