After puberty, and during early adolescence, when a certain amount of
knowledge has been acquired, we leave youth free to learn lies from
advertisements, carefully calculated to foster the tendency to
hypochondria, which is often associated with such matters. Of this,
however, no more need now be said, since it scarcely concerns the girl.
It is the ignorance conditioned by prudery that is responsible later on
for many criminal marriages; contracted, it may be, with the blind
blessing of Church and State, which, however, the laws of heredity and
infection rudely ignore. Parents cannot bring themselves to inquire into
matters which profoundly concern the welfare of the daughter for whom
they propose to make what appears to be a good marriage. They desire, of
course, that her children shall be healthy and whole-minded; they do not
desire that marriage should be for her the beginning of disease, from
the disastrous effects of which she may never recover. But these are
delicate matters, and prudery forbids that they should be inquired into;
yet every father who permits his daughter to marry without having
satisfied himself on these points is guilty, at the least, of grave
delinquency of duty, and may, in effect, be conniving at disasters and
desolations of which he will not live to see the end.
Young people often grow fond of each other and become engaged, and then,
if the engagement be prolonged--as all engagements ought to be, as a
general rule--they may find that, after all, they do not wish to marry.
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