"Oh, mamma, what a lovely new pony! Where did you get it?" "Is it
really mine?" "Oh, papa, what a dandy, new sled! Where did you get
it? Can't I use it right now?" "Oh, have we got a new baby? A real
baby? Is it ours? Where did it come from?" "Can't I hold it?"

All are familiar with these expressions of wonder, of delight, of
joy of possession, but how to satisfy the eager mind aright is a
problem requiring our most careful thought. Books, papers, and
magazines tell us what to say and how to say it. All this should
be talked over, and, if the mother does not know, the nurse should
know what books to tell her to read.

The medical world to-day is much concerned over the question of
prostitution and its effect upon the coming race, through the
transmission of syphilitic taint to an innocent wife, who is
thereafter barren, or who bears syphilitic children. The folly of
the double standard, purity insisted on for the wife, unchasity
condoned in the husband; all these subjects are sure to be brought
up, and the nurse who goes prepared on these and kindred topics
can do an immense amount of good to the women she nurses.

She can show how useful the knowledge of chastity is to a boy-the
strength that comes from self-control, the weakness that follows
self-indulgence, the danger to himself and to those he really
loves when he contaminates himself with prostitutes. A young man
once said to a friend of mine, "Oh! if my mother had only warned
me of the suffering I would cause myself and others, I never would
have polluted my body and shamed my soul." The nurse should know
how to instruct the mother as to the signs of self-abuse in her
little boys, so that she may know what causes the nervous