of leprosy.  Believe, rather, the words of James Hinton, written to a woman friend:  “You women have been living in a dreamland of your own; but dare to live in this poor disordered world of God’s, and it will work out in you a better goodness than your own,”—­even that purified womanhood, strong to know, and strong to save, before whose gracious loveliness the strongest man grows weak as a child, and, as a little child, grows pure.

God grant that, in view of the tremendous responsibilities that devolve upon us women in these latter days, we may cry from our hearts: 

    “Let not fine culture, poesy, art, sweet tones,
    Build up about my soothed sense a world
    That is not Thine, and wall me up in dreams. 
    So my sad heart may cease to beat with Thine,
    The great World-Heart, whose blood, forever shed,
    Is human life, whose ache is man’s dull pain.”

CHAPTER II

“Why should I interfere?”

I am, of course, aware that at the very outset I shall be met by the question—­far less frequently urged, however, by thoughtful mothers than it used to be—­“Why need I interfere at all in a subject like this?  Why may I not leave it all to the boy’s father?  Why should it be my duty to face a question which is very distasteful to me, and which I feel I had much better let alone?”

I would answer at once, Because the evil is so rife, the dangers so great and manifold, the temptations so strong and subtle, that your influence must be united to that of the boy’s father if you want to safeguard him.  Every influence you can lay hold of is needed here, and will not prove more than enough.  The influence of one parent alone is not sufficient, more especially as there are potent lines of influence open to you as a woman from which a man, from the very fact that he is a man, is necessarily debarred.

You must bring the whole of that influence to bear for the following considerations.

Let me take the lowest and simplest first.  Even if you be indifferent to your boy’s moral welfare, you cannot be indifferent to his physical well-being, nay, to his very existence.  Here I necessarily cannot tell you all I know; but I would ask you thoughtfully to study for yourself a striking diagram which Dr. Carpenter, in one of our recognized medical text-books, has reproduced from the well-known French statistician, Quetelet, showing the comparative viability, or life value, of men and women respectively at different ages.

[Illustration:  Diagram representing the comparative viability of the male and female at different ages.]