they were worthy of that honor. A great part of our foolishness with children is due to the emptiness of our own heads.

These parents will delegate one man and one woman to make a thorough study of the sex education of the young. Of course, there is knowledge about sex which has to be given to the very youngest child, and more and more must be given as they grow older and ask more questions. But what I have in mind here is that detailed and precise knowledge which must be given to the young when they approach the period of puberty. At this age of fourteen or fifteen the man will take each of the boys apart, and the woman will take each of the girls, and will explain to them what they need to know. This duty will not be trusted to parents, for parents have an imbecile fear of talking straight to their children, and try to get by with rubbish about bees and flowers. Let every child know that the days of the hole-andcorner sex business is forever past, and that here is an instructed person, who talks real American, and knows what he is talking about, and will deal with facts, instead of with evasions.

This club will help to educate the youngsters, and also to give them a good time, developing both their minds and bodies, and learning to know them thoroughly. When they are sixteen each one will have another talk, this time about marriage and what it means; learning that it is not merely flirtations and delicious thrills, but a business partnership, and the deepest and best of all friendships. So when John finds that he likes Mary best of all the girls he knows, this won't be a subject for "kidding" and sly innuendo, and blushes and simpering on Mary's part, but an occasion for decent and sensible talk about what each of them really is, and what each thinks the other to be. If they think they are in love, then there will be a council of the elder statesmen, to consider that case, and what are the chances of happiness in that love. This may sound forbidding, but it is exactly what is done at present-only it is not done honestly and frankly, and therefore does not carry proper weight with the young people.

I am an opponent of long engagements, but I am also an opponent of no engagements at all; I know no truer proverb than "Marry in haste and repent at leisure." It would be my idea that a very young couple should announce their

engagement, and then wait six months, and be consulted again about the matter, and have a chance to withdraw with no hard feelings, if either party thought best. If they wished to go on, they might be asked to wait another six months, if their elders felt very certain there were reasons to doubt the wisdom of the match.

There are, of course, people who, because of disease or physical defect, should never be allowed to marry; and others who might marry, but should not be allowed to have children. There should be laws providing for such cases, requiring physical examination before marriage, and in extreme cases providing for a simple and harmless surgical operation to prevent the hopelessly unfit from passing on their defects to the future. But dealing for the moment with normal young persons, members of our modern marriage club, I should say that if, after they have listened to the warning of their elders, and have waited for a decent interval to think things over, they still remain of the opinion that they can make a successful marriage, then it is up to the elders to wish them luck. I have known of young couples who have refused to heed warnings, and regretted it; but I have known of others who went ahead and had their own way and proved they were right. There is a form of wisdom called experience and there is another form called love.

I hear the worldly and cynical rail at the blindness of "young love," and I can see the truth in what they say; but also I can see the deeper truth in the magic dreams of the young soul. Here is a youth who adores a girl, and you know the girl, and it is comical to you, because you know she is not any of the things the youth imagines. But who are you that claim to know the last thing about a human soul? Look into your own, and see how many different things you are! Look back, if you can, to the time when you were young, and remember the visions and the hopes. They have lost all reality to you now; but who can say how many of them you might have made real if there had been one other person who believed in them, and loved them, and would not give them up?

I write this; and then I think of the other side-the fools that I have known in love! The trusting women, marrying rotten men to reform them! The pitiful people who think that fine phrases and sentimentality can take the place of

facts! I implore my young couples to sit down and face the realities of their own natures, to decide what they are, and what they want to be-and if there is going to be any change, let it be made and tried out before marriage! I implore them to begin now to control their desires by their reason and judgment; to begin, each of them at the very outset, to carry their share of the burdens and do their share of the hard work. I implore them to value independence and self-reliance in the other, and never above all things to marry from pity, which is a worthy emotion in its place, but has nothing to do with sex, which should be an affair between equals, a matter of partnership and not of parasitism. I think that, on the whole, the most dreadful thing in love is the use of it for preying, for the securing of favors and advantages of any sort, whether by men or by women.

CHAPTER XLII

EDUCATION FOR MARRIAGE

(Maintains that the art of love can be taught, and that we have the right and the duty to teach it.)

I assume now that our young couple have definitely made up their minds, and that the wedding day is near. They are therefore, both the man and the woman, in position to receive information as to the physical aspects of their future experience. This information is now for the most part possessed only by pathologists-who impart it too late, after people have blundered and wrecked their lives. The opponents of birth control ask in horror if you would teach it to the young; I am now able to answer just when I would teach it; I would teach it to these young couples about to marry. I would make it by law compulsory for every young couple to attend a school of marriage, and to learn, not merely the regulation of conception, but the whole art of health and happiness in sex.

Perhaps the words, "a school of marriage," strike you as funny. When I was young I remember that Pulitzer founded a school of journalism, and all newspaper editors made merry-they knew that journalism could only be learned in practice. But nowadays every city editor gives preference to an applicant who has taken a college course in reporting; they have learned that journalism can be taught, just like engineering and accounting. In the same way I assert that marriage can be taught, and the art of love, physical, mental, moral, and even financial; I think that the day will come when enlightened parents would no more dream of trusting their tender young daughter to a man who had not taken a course in sex, than they would go up in an aeroplane with a pilot who knew nothing about an engine.

The knowledge which I possess upon the art of love I would be glad to give you in this book; but unfortunately, if I were to do so, my book would be suppressed, and I should be sent to jail.

Some ten or twelve years ago I received a pitiful letter

from a man who was in state's prison in Delaware, charged with having imparted information as to birth control. Under our amiable legal system, a perfectly innocent man may be thrown into jail, and kept there for a year or two before he is tried, and if he is without money or friends, he might as well be buried alive. I went to Wilmington to call on the United States attorney who had caused the indictment in this case, and had an illuminating conversation with him. The official was anxious to justify what he had done. He assured me that he was no bigot, but on the contrary an extremely liberal man, a Unitarian, a Progressive, etc. "But Mr. Sinclair," he said, "I assure you this prisoner is not a reformer or humanitarian or anything like that. He is a depraved person. Look, here is something we found in his trunk when we arrested him; a pamphlet, explaining about sex relations. See this paragraph-it says that the pleasure of intercourse is increased if it is prolonged."

I looked at the pamphlet, and then I looked at the attorney. "Do you think you have stated the matter quite fairly?" I asked. "Apparently the purpose is to explain that the emotions of women are more slow to be aroused than those of men, and that husbands failing to realize this, often do not gratify their wives."

"Well," said the other, "do you consider that a subject to be discussed?"

"Pardon me if I discuss it just a moment," I replied. "Do you happen to know whether the statement is a fact?" "No, I don't. It may be, I suppose."

"You have never investigated the matter?"

The legal representative of our government was evidently annoyed by my persistence. "I have not," he answered.

"But then, suppose I were to tell you that thousands of homes have been broken up for lack of just that bit of knowledge; that tens of thousands of marriages are miserable for lack of it."

"Surely, Mr. Sinclair, you exaggerate!"

"Not at all. I could prove to you by one medical authority after another, that if the desire of a woman in marriage is roused, and then left ungratified, the result is nervous strain, and in the long run it may be nervous breakdown."

The above covers only one detail of the pamphlet in question. I read some pages of it, and argued them out with