Continence
The training of the boy would be very incomplete did it not contain some clear explanation and plain-spoken
instruction
on this head.
The prudish mystery with which we have come to veil this important question among the youth of both sexes is
doing
incalculable harm. The very secrecy with which we withhold all knowledge from the boy prompts him the more to
take his
own line equally secretly, and, therefore, injuriously.
I have never known a boy who was not the better for having the matter put to him frankly and fully. For an
instructor to
let his boys walk on this exceedingly thin ice without giving them a warning word, owing to some prudish
sentimentality,
would be little short of a crime.
— Sir Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting for
Boys,
Fourth Edition (C. Pearson, 1911)
