withdraw their daughter from the school, and gave no explanation whatever for his action. The parents lost themselves in every kind of conjecture, for the girl was very diligent and went to school gladly. They questioned her again and again without learning anything. She had a relative whom curiosity devoured, who asked her whether the principal had attempted some indecency with her when they were alone; but the girl would answer only with weeping. And one day, as her parents were returning from a walk, they found upon the table a note from their daughter, in which she had written: — 'My dear parents, I am going to throw myself into the

river, for I cannot live in shame; and what you supposed is true.'

As for the school principal, he defended his innocence before the public examining magistrate and said that the girl had grown attached to him, and that this sudden awakening of her feelings had coincided with a bodily development in advance of its time. The girl had been in the habit of sitting on his knees, throwing her arms about his neck, and lavishing on him many other marks of affection. Since these gestures seemed at first of no consequence, the educator paid them no heed; but they soon took a form that gave cause for alarm, and he resolved at last to send the girl

back to her parents. But this story did not save the principal, and he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment — until a learned and very able lawyer succeeded in proving his innocence, and that the case was one of childish hysteria."

Thus the suicides of children — which are, alas, more numerous than we suppose — result most often from a premature and violent awakening of the sensual feelings. The terrified among them, or at least those whom their parents have failed to understand, are liable to "flee into death," in the expression of Freud.

And here is the American Lindsey, one of the world's great men of the law where American youth