By Mary Wood-Allen, M. D.
"Let me take your book of quotations, please."
"Certainly, if I can find it. O, I remember. I let Susie Glenn take it.
No doubt I can find it in her desk."
As she spoke Miss Bell walked to the desk and, finding the desired book,
took possession of it. An open note dropped from it and fell upon the
floor. Picking it up Miss Bell read: "My darling little sweetheart," and
glancing at the close saw the signature, "Carl." Sending of notes in
school was forbidden, therefore Miss Bell had no compunction of
conscience in taking possession of this one, and, on the impulse of the
moment, read it aloud to Miss Lane, her fellow-teacher. It was not only
sentimental in tone but there were mysterious phrases which seemed to
hold a deep and sinful significance. The women looked at each other with
sorrowful faces.
"What shall I do about it?" asked Miss Bell.
"What a depth of wickedness it reveals!" exclaimed Miss Lane. "Who would
have imagined that such a nice appearing boy as Carl Woodford could be
so base? And Susie Glenn too, such a shy, modest little creature as she
seems."
"Do you suppose it is really as bad as it seems to us? Those expressions
which appear to indicate such--such almost criminal intimacy perhaps
they do not understand fully."
"Don't you believe it," said Miss Lane. "I tell you these children are
wiser in sin than we older people can imagine. That boy needs to be
whipped within an inch of his life, the little reprobate! I'd give him
such a lecture as would make his eyes open wide for once. I'd make him
understand that he'd better not let me catch him in such mischief again.
And I'd tell Mrs. Glenn about it so that she could punish Susie."
"I really am afraid that the result would not be what we wish. Suppose
we go and talk it over with Dr. Barrett. Maybe she can tell us what to
do."
Dr. Barrett received the ladies with cordiality and professed herself
willing to aid them in the solution of their problem. She did not appear
as shocked as they did, and even smiled a little as Miss Lane, in
indignant tones, read aloud the offending note.
"Don't you think that little rascal should be nearly annihilated?" she
asked, turning to the Doctor.
"I think he should be instructed," replied the latter. "Will you send
him to me, Miss Bell?"
"Most gladly, but I don't believe he will come."
"Yes he will, if you don't frighten him beforehand. Don't say a word to
him about the affair, but send him with a note to me and tell him to
wait for an answer."
The next evening Carl appeared at the Doctor's residence with the note
from Miss Bell. "I am to wait for an answer," he said.
Dr. Barrett only nodded as she wrote on steadily for a moment, seeming
too much engrossed in her work to notice him. Then she read the note,
thought a moment, excused herself and left the room. Returning
immediately she said, "It will be half an hour before the answer is
ready. Can you wait?"
"O certainly."
"Then sit down here and look over the Youth's Companion while I finish
my letter."
For some moments there was silence and then the Doctor, laying down her
pen, turned to the boy and said, pleasantly; "You are Carl Woodford, are
you not?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"It has been so long since I saw you that you have almost grown out of
my knowledge. You are getting to be almost a man. You must be fifteen
years old."
"Not quite. I will be next June."
"Almost a man," said Dr. Barrett softly as she looked thoughtfully into
the fire. After a moment's silence she asked, "Carl, what is it to be a
man?"
The boy drew himself up with a self-conscious air as he replied.
"Why, to have your growth, and get into business for yourself."
"Well, that is not quite it," said the Doctor smiling, "for I have my
growth and am in business for myself, and yet I am not a man."
"Maybe it means having a mustache," said Carl, with a slight flush.
"That has something to do with it certainly, but Mrs. Flynn has a
mustache, and she is not a man."
"Well, I don't know how to explain it then," said Carl.
"You have studied grammar, will you parse the word man?"
"Man is a common noun, masculine gender, third----"
"What does masculine gender mean?"
"It means male."
"Then to be a man means to be a male. How does the grammar define
gender?"
"The distinction of nouns with regard to sex."
"Have you studied physiology?"
"Yes'm."
"Was it the physiology of man or woman?"
"Why, it didn't say anything but physiology."
"You studied, then, only those organs in which men and women are alike,
as in their muscular and nervous systems, and in the organs of
digestion; in fact you learned only of the organs which are for the
preservation of the individual. You learned nothing of them in regard to
sex, which is termed special physiology."
A wave of color was creeping over Carl's face, seeing which the Doctor
said:
"As you have never studied this special physiology supposing you try to
forget that any one has ever told you anything about it, and let us for
a few minutes talk of it as of God's laws. We believe God to be pure,
and we cannot believe that he would make a law that was founded on
impurity. It is true we are able to think of his laws in an impure way,
but that is our fault, not his. Let us now try to think his pure
thoughts after him. If there are two sexes created by the Almighty he
must have a pure purpose in creating them. We seldom think how much of
beauty and melody and loveliness is due to sex.
"It is because of sex that we are gathered in families and enjoy all the
delights of home. It is because of sex that we have ties of kindred,
brothers, sisters, father, mother, uncles, aunts and cousins. Think of
the pleasant home gatherings at Christmas or Thanksgiving, or upon
family birthdays, with all the relatives, old and young, meeting in love
and sympathy; think of the sweet prattle of children in the home; think
of the tender ministrations of mother or sister in times of sorrow or
illness or death, and remember that these are possible because of sex.
Men may build themselves fine club houses where they congregate to smoke
or drink or eat together, but these are not homes. Women may go away by
themselves into a convent and give up the world, but in so doing they
give up the home; for in a real true home there must be parents and
children, and this comes through sex. We may go even farther and say
with Mr. Grant Allen that everything high and ennobling in our nature
springs directly from the fact of sex. He claims that to it 'we owe our
love of color, of graceful forms, of melodious sound, of rhythmical
motion, the evolution of music, of poetry, of romance, of painting, of
sculpture, of decorative art, of dramatic entertainment. From it,' he
says, 'springs the love of beauty, around it all beautiful arts circle
as their centre. Its subtle aroma pervades all literature, and to it we
owe the heart and all that is best within it.'
"We read of knights of old fighting for 'fayre ladye,' of heroes who
died to save wives and children; we cannot take up a book of poetry
without realizing how love of men and women has been the inspiration of
the poet in all ages. And this is not all that we owe to sex. In all
organic life we find the same force at work. The song of the nightingale
is a call to his mate, the chirp of cricket, the song of the thrush, the
note of the grasshopper, every charming voice in wild nature are notes
of love, and were it not for these, field and forest would be silent.
Among the animals we can trace the beauty of form and of covering to the
same source. And even in the inanimate world of plants and trees we find
sex as the source of life and beauty. The bright tinted flowers are the
homes of the father and mother and babies of the plant and without the
male and female principle in plants there would be no bud or blossom and
no fruit. Remember when you see the beauty of the apple orchard in the
spring and the glowing fruit in the autumn that these are the expression
of sex-life in the tree."
"My!" exclaimed Carl, "I never thought of all that before."
"I presume not, and many who are older than you have no thoughts of sex
but those which are low and vile. But when you consider how the same
principle reaches through all nature, and upon it depends so much that
is beautiful and charming you cannot believe that is in itself vile and
unholy, can you? If we are to think God's thoughts after him we must
come to look upon sex as something to be thought of and spoken of only
with reverence, never to be jested about or debased in any way. You
begin to see that more is involved in the coming into manhood than you
had supposed. But we have not gone over the whole matter yet. You have
read the first chapter of Genesis how that God made man in his own
image, and out of the dust of the earth. We do not suppose that he made
him out of dirt and water, as a child makes mud-pies, but we may accept
this as a statement of the scientific fact that in man are found the
same elements as in the earth, such as iron, soda, lime, etc. What we
want to think of now is the statement that God created man by his direct
power. Then we are told he made woman also. These are the first living
human beings of whom we have record. Who is the third?"
"Cain."
"And who made Cain?"
"God," answered Carl glibly, as if that must be the only orthodox
answer.
"In the same way that he made Adam and Eve?"
Carl blushed and was silent.
"You were not embarrassed when I spoke of the creation of Adam and Eve,
you have no reason to be embarrassed when I speak of the creation of
Cain. All was in accordance with the divine will, and must therefore be
right. We cannot say positively that God thought this or that, but we
have a right to judge from his acts what his purposes were. We have a
right to suppose that he created the earth intending to people it with
human beings. Of course every possible plan for doing this was open to
him. He might have created each individual as he did Adam, but what
would have been the result? We should have stood, each one alone, in
selfish solitariness, like a lot of ten-pins, able to knock each other
down but not to help each other up. Each one would have been thinking
only of himself and his own selfish interests. This plan could not
commend itself to a compassionate Creator, and we can imagine that he
would say to himself: 'That would never do. I must put these, my
children, in such relation to each other that they will have love for
each other; that they will be bound by ties so strong that nothing can
break them; they must be created in such a way that they will also
understand their relation to me and love me as their life-giver. To do
this I will share with them my greatest power, that of creation. I will
let them help me people the world. By this creative power they shall
come to understand how I, their heavenly Father, love them, and yearn
over them, and by their dependence as children upon their parents they
shall learn to depend upon and trust me.' From the plan God adopted for
peopling the earth we may suppose this to have been his process of
thought. So you see that sex comes as a wondrous gift from God, a gift
endowed with a marvelous power, and therefore to be held most sacred.
When I spoke of you as being almost a man it was with the thought that
now is being conferred upon you this gift of sex."