In both cases there is then a rapid fall, the age of puberty being a critical age.

But from fifteen, when the female line begins to right itself, only showing by a gentle curve downwards the added risks of the child-bearing period in a woman's life, the male line, which ought, without these risks, to keep above the female line, makes a sharp dip below it, till it reaches its lowest point at twenty-five, the age when the excesses of youth have had time to tell most on the system.[1] Here, at least, is evidence that none can gainsay.

The more you ponder that mysterious sharp dip in the man's line of life at the very age which Nature intended should be the prime and flower of life, the more deeply you will feel that some deep and hidden danger lies concealed there, the more earnestly you will come to the conclusion that you cannot and will not thrust from you the responsibility that rests upon you as the boy's mother of helping to guard him from it.

Keep him from the knowledge of evil, and the temptations that come with that knowledge, you cannot.

The few first days at school will insure that, to say nothing of the miserable streets of our large towns.