21 80 YEARS AGO (Reproduced from the April issue of the Review of Religions 1910) REVIEW We have received the first four volumes of Personal Purity Publications. The first two are For Boys and For Young Men and the other two, For Girls and For Young Women. These volumes are handy, instructive and concise and wholly free from all technicalities. The author has taken pains to be plain and distinct and has dealt with the subject in the manner of a layman who is otherwise fully master of the subject; and the language is so simple and illustrations so very homely that a boy or a girl of an ordinary understanding can understand them very easily. It is the parents first who are addressed and to whom it is pointed out that it is their first duty to instruct their children in the universal laws of personal purity. The parents, says the author, withhold their advice from their children under the mistaken impression that ignorance is innocence, and the result is that what they do not learn at home, they learn from their companions generally in a manner that brings bitter fruit in the end. The great enemy of personal and individual growth is self-abuse which is so very rampant now-a-days among the youth of all countries. The author chiefly inveighs against this curse which, he says, makes those that take recourse to it, dull-witted and stupid. They cannot play any healthy or manly game, they grow weaker, they are unhappy. They suffer from headache and backache and the first disease that comes along lays hold of them and finds them ready victims. They become morose, quarrelsome and mischievous. They flush to the roots of their hair at the slightest provocation, their muscles become flabby, their eyes lustreless and they look old, haggard and worn out. Their brain fails, their memory departs, and all interest in life soon vanishes away. Their probable end is first the lunatic asylum and then the grave. The author also gives valuable advice on matters pertaining to food, drink, dress, reading etc., and we would be doing mere justice if we strongly recommend these volumes to our readers.
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