Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/141



ET me see your tongue," our old family physician used to say to me when as a youngster I went to him for advice as to the various ailments which were wont to beset me.

"A clean tongue tells a good deal about a boy's bodily health," he was given to saying.

In like manner I have found since those days that a clean tongue is a pretty accurate index of a boy's moral condition. I have not infrequently been startled, not to say ashamed, at organization dinners, at fraternity firesides, and at class smokers to hear the risque talk that is current. I have wondered if the systems of these men might not be the better of a moral cleansing, as a mother I once knew used to wash out the mouth of her son with soap and water after he had uttered a dirty or an irreverent word.

An acquaintance recounted to me only a