They saw before their
shrinking eyes a hundred corpses, washed and shrouded. "There is but one
remedy against this evil," went on the minister, "the precious wounds of
Christ." But how this remedy was to be used against sexual precocity, he
did not tell them. He admonished them not to go to dances, to shun
theatres and gaming-houses, and above all things, to avoid women; that
is to say to act in exact contradiction to their inclinations. That this
vice contradicts and utterly confounds he pronouncement of the community
that a man is not mature until he is twenty-one, was passed over in
silence. Whether it could be prevented by early marriages (supposing a
means of providing food for all instead of banquets for a few could be
found) remained an open question. The final issue was that one should
throw oneself into the arms of Christ, that is to say, go to church, and
leave the care of temporal things to the upper classes.
After this admonishment the minister requested the first five on the
first form to stay behind. He wished to speak to them in private. The
first five looked as if they had been sentenced to death. Their chests
contracted; they breathed with difficulty, and a careful observer might
have noticed that their hair had risen an inch at the roots and lay over
their skulls in damp strands like the hair of a corpse.
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