Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/78

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times ending even fatally, of the early tasting of the forbidden fruit;* [1] and what better can be expected in a country where so few feel the duty of placing a check upon their tongues or their tastes for their dear ones' sake, and where painted Jezebels are permitted to jaunt in the most respectable localities, at times in the very neighbourhood of educational institutions? But the main effort has to be directed to preventative rather than to remedial work-to forearm the youth against coming dangers rather than to snatch them from present evils. What our community needs is the formation of associations, on che lines of 'the guilds of honour' in the west, with membership large enough for fraternity but quite within bounds for discipline, worked in a fostering spirit by persons that have a sacred sense of the promise and the

  1. * Alarming particularly ate the accounts given by several medical men of "that hideous sin, engendered by vice and practised in solitude" by a large number of students and other young men. It is to be hoped that the type of hotels and "eating-houses" from which nefarious stories come out occasionally, like blasts from hell, is fast becoming obsolete.