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Show r- A Useful Custom. Tt has been carefully ascertained that in the majority ma-jority of cases the habit of drinking to excess is formed between the sixteenth and twenty-fifth year. Statistics compiled both here and in Europe agree in exhibiting this fact. It is clear, then, that parents are very largely responsible for the drunkenness that afflicts society. so-ciety. If they were more attentive to the habits of their boys, they would both save souls and shield society. If the father refused to abdicate his position po-sition as governor of the household, and if the mother cultivated less loving confidence in the impeccability im-peccability of her boys, the roster of the school of future drunkards and law-breakers would be markedly cut down. Parents must generally blame themselves for the sorrows their uiruly children make, them. It. is action and reaction on the basis of the. fourth commandment. The parents have broken the mandate first, and the child's sin is the result of the parents' neglect. Bearing in mind the fact that intemperance is shown to be developed bet wen the sixteenth and twenty-fifth year, parents should specially supervise super-vise the habits of their boys during these years. If they care to make them moderate drinkers, well and good. But their task of supervision will he all the more onerous and precarious if this course is pursued. They put their children in constant temptation. temp-tation. They must be always on hand "drinking with the boys," to see that there is no excess and no succumbing to the many allurements of saloon conviviality. Far better the rule of total abstinence for boys, until the period of their majority. Even if it be desired that, as men. they should be moderate drinkers, reasonable parent will see the protection and advantage of total abstinence during the crucial cru-cial period of boyhood and young manhood. It is a wise practice, second only in importance to a Christian education, that boys be requested to take the total abstinence pledge. upon making their first communion or at confirmation. Parents desiring de-siring their children excused might be accommodated. accommo-dated. But, in all other cases, the total abs-tinence pledge ought to be administered. The general establishment of this practice in our country would not be a violent innovation. Yet if a violent remedy were needful, there is a sufficiently suf-ficiently crying evil to justify it. We must not shut our eyes to the police records or to the prison statistics; to, hoodlumism ; to social inferiorities and to the phenomenal number of orphans, waifs aud street Arabs, all and each dragging the name of Catholic after them. The conscientious man who can sit down contentedly and talk in an optimistic op-timistic vein with these facts staring him in the face is a fool. That something drastic has not been done is a scandal, and the scandal grows. Catholic Citizen. |