At puberty they were secluded, sometimes for a whole year, being kept in darkness, suffering, and filth.

Yet defective and unsatisfactory as this initiation was, "Langsdorf suggests," says Bancroft (_Native Races of Pacific_, vol.i, p.

110), referring to the virtues of the Thlinkeet woman, "that it may be during this period of confinement that the foundation of her influence is laid; that in modest reserve and meditation her character is strengthened, and she comes forth cleansed in mind as well as body." We have lost these ancient and invaluable rites of initiation into manhood and womanhood, with their inestimable moral benefits; at the most we have merely preserved the shells of initiation in which the core has decayed.
In time, we cannot doubt, they will be revived in modern forms.

At present the spiritual initiation of youths and maidens is left to the chances of some happy accident, and usually it is of a purely cerebral character which cannot be perfectly wholesome, and is at the best absurdly incomplete.
This cerebral initiation commonly occurs to the youth through the medium of literature.

The influence of literature in sexual education thus extends, in an incalculable degree, beyond the narrow sphere of manuals on sexual hygiene, however admirable and desirable these may be.