I mention these things, not to reproach teachers,--for I think their moral character, in this country, generally, far better than their intellectual,--but as a specimen of perversion in the public sentiment; and also as a hint to all who have the care of the young. Pupils at school, cannot fail to make correct inferences from such facts as the foregoing. 4. DOUBLE ENTENDRES.[15] By this is meant seemingly _decent speeches, with double meanings_. I mention these because they prevail, in some parts of the country, to a most alarming degree; and because parents seem to regard them as perfectly harmless. Shall I say--to show the extent of the evil--that they are sometimes heard from both parents? Now no serious observer of human life and conduct can doubt that by every species of impure language, whether in the form of hints, innuendoes, double entendres, or plainer speech, impure thoughts are awakened, a licentious imagination inflamed, and licentious purposes formed, which would otherwise never have existed. Of all such things an inspired writer has long ago said--and the language is still applicable;--'Let them not be so much as named among you.' I have been in families where these loose insinuations, and coarse innuendoes were so common, that the presence of respectable company scarcely operated as a restraint upon the unbridled tongues, even of the parents! Many of these things had been repeated so often, and under such circumstances that the children, at a very early age, perfectly understood their meaning and import. Yet had these very same children asked for direct information, at this time, on the subjects which had been rendered familiar to them thus incidentally, the parents would have startled; and would undoubtedly have repeated to them part of a string of falsehoods, with which they had been in the habit of attempting to 'cover up' these matters; though with the effect, in the end, of rendering the children only so much the more curious and inquisitive. But this is not all. The filling of the juvenile mind, long before nature brings the body to maturity, with impure imaginations, not only preoccupies the ground which is greatly needed for something else, and fills it with shoots of a noxious growth, but actually induces, if I may so say, a _precocious maturity_. What I mean, is, that there arises a morbid or diseased state of action of the vessels of the sexual system, which paves the way for premature physical developement, and greatly increases the danger of youthful irregularity. [15] Pronounced _entaunders_. 5. EVENING PARTIES.