alcohol made by the champions of life in the past, let there be added that on which all students of venereal diseases are agreed--that it is the most potent ally of the most loathsome evils that afflict mankind. This chapter is not yet complete. In many cases it may be read not by the girl who is contemplating marriage, but by one or both of her parents. If the reader be such an one I here charge him or her with the solemn responsibility which is theirs whether they realize it or not. You desire your daughter's welfare; you wish her to be healthy and happy in her married life; perhaps your heart rejoices at the thought of grand-children; you concern yourself with your prospective son-in-law's character, with his income and prospects; you wish him to be steady and sober; you would rather that he came of a family not conspicuous for morbid tendencies. All this is well and as it should be; yet there is that to be considered which, whilst it is only negative, and should not have to be considered at all, yet takes precedence of all these other questions. If the man in question is tainted with either or both of these diseases, he is to be _summarily rejected_ at any rate until responsible and, one may suggest, at least duplicated medical opinion has pronounced him cured. Microscopic examination of the blood or otherwise can now pronounce on this matter with much more definiteness than used to be possible. But even so, there are possibilities of error, for experts are more and more coming to recognize the existence and the importance of latent gonorrh[oe]a, devoid of characteristic symptoms but yet liable to wake in the individual and always dangerous from the point of view of infection. No combination of advantages is worth the dust in the balance when weighed against either of these diseases in a prospective son-in-law: infection is not a matter of chance but of certainty or little short of it. Everything may seem fair and full of promise, yet there may be that in the case which will wreck all in the present; not to mention destroying the chance of motherhood or bringing rotten or permanently blinded children into the world. It follows, therefore, that parents or guardians are guilty of a grave dereliction of duty if they neglect to satisfy themselves in time on this point. Doubtless, in the great majority of cases no harm will be done. But in the rest irreparable harm is often done, and the innocent, ignorant girl who has been betrayed by father and mother and husband alike, may turn upon you all, perhaps on her death-bed, perhaps with the blasted future in her arms, and say "This is _your_ doing: behold your deed." "_But if ye could and would not_, oh, what plea, Think ye, shall stead you at your trial, when The thunder-cloud of witnesses shall loom, With Ravished Childhood on the seat of doom At the Assizes of Eternity?"