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fellows and with servants should be closely watched and always suspected. Many, alas! have received their first lessons in immorality or crime from the hostler or the cook, while a single night with a strange bed-fellow may initiate a boy in mysteries to which he had else remained a stranger. This last danger is greatly increased if the casual room-mate be by a few years his senior; for the power of mischief possessed by the older boy is increased in proportion to his size, and, alas! his experience. If a boy be an onanist he is sure to corrupt the smaller boys of his acquaintance whenever a safe opportunity presents itself, and thus children of six and twelve fall victims of those of twelve and eighteen.
At the age of six, states a physician in describing his own case, he was allowed to attend an evening party with his sister, many years his senior, for the purpose of taking part in some tableaux. A violent storm compelled several to pass the night with our entertainers and he occupied the same bed with a young gentleman of seventeen. On that occasion a lesson of vice was imparted, whose import was then unknown, but whose impression was indelible.
Another case, of a writer who states : At the age of eight he was lodged, at a watering place, in the same room with three girls, respectively ten, twelve, and fourteen years of age. The elder of these little misses succeeded effectually, during the few weeks' association, in inducting her companions into the science of reproduction, while the male member of the quartet was aptly used in illustration of the subject. The matronly dignity with which this lady now chaperones her young daughters in the most fashionable circles of one of our most fashionable cities, does not, he says, in the least diminish the feelings of hostility with which he, as one of her pupils regards her, and which the
