into the hands of a boy or girl at puberty than M.A.
Warren's
_Almost Fourteen_, written by an American school
teacher in 1892.
It was a most charming and delicately written book,
which could
not have offended the innocence of the most
sensitive maiden.
Nothing, however, is sacred to prurience, and it was
easy for the
prurient to capture the law and obtain (in 1897)
legal
condemnation of this book as "obscene." Anything which sexually
excites a prurient mind is, it is true, "obscene"
for that mind,
for, as Mr. Theodore Schroeder remarks, obscenity is
"the
contribution of the reading mind," but we need such books as this
in order to diminish the number of prurient minds,
and the
condemnation of so entirely admirable a book makes,
not for
morality, but for immorality. I am told that the