of these things? Let us for a few moments at least, put pretence and
claptrap aside, and recall our own youth. Let us recognize that this
complex initiation is always a very shy and secret process, beyond the
range of parent and guardian. The prying type of schoolmaster or
schoolmistress only drives the thing deeper, and, at the worst,
blunders with a hideous suggestiveness. It is almost an instinct, a
part of the natural modesty of the growing young, to hide all that is
fermenting in the mind from authoritative older people. It would not be
difficult to find a biological reason for that. The growing mind
advances slowly, intermittently, with long pauses and sudden panics,
that is the law of its progress; it feels its way through three main
agencies, firstly, observation, secondly, tentative, confidential talk
with unauthoritative and trusted friends, and thirdly, books. In the
present epoch observation declines relatively to books; books and
pictures, these dumb impersonal initiators, play a larger and a larger
part in this great awakening. Perhaps for all but the children of the
urban poor, the furtive talk also declines and is delayed; a most
desirable thing in a civilizing process that finds great advantage in
putting off adolescence and prolonging the average life.

Now the furtive talk is largely beyond our control, only by improving
the general texture of our communal life can we effectually improve the
quality of that. But we may bear in mind that factor of observation,
and give it a casting vote in any decision upon public decency. That is
all too often forgotten. Before Broadbeam, the popular humorist, for
example, flashes his glittering rapier upon the County Council for
suppressing some vulgar obscenity in the music-halls, or tickles the
ribs of a Vigilance Association for its care of our hoardings, he
should do his best to imagine the mental process of some nice boy or
girl he knows, "taking it in." To come outright to the essential matter