sort of books that our vice crusading friend reads. They like to
conjure up the charms of carnality, and to help out their
somewhat sluggish imaginations by actual peeps at it, but when
it comes to taking a forthright header into the sulphur they usually
fail to muster up the courage. For one clerk who succumbs to the
houris of the pave, there are five hundred who succumb to lack of
means, the warnings of the sex hygienists, and their own depressing
consciences. For one"clubman"--i.e., bagman or suburban
vestryman--who invades the women's shops, engages the affection
of some innocent miss, lures her into infamy and then sells her to
the Italians, there are one thousand who never get any further than
asking the price of cologne water and discharging a few furtive
winks. And for one husband of the Nordic race who maintains a
blonde chorus girl in oriental luxury around the comer, there are ten
thousand who are as true to their wives, year in and year out, as so
many convicts in the death-house, and would be no more capable of
any such loathsome malpractice, even in the face of free
opportunity, than they would be of cutting off the ears of their
young.


I am sorry to blow up so much romance. In particular, I am sorry
for the suffragettes who specialize in the double standard, for when
they get into pantaloons at last, and have the new freedom,
they will discover to their sorrow that they have been pursuing a
chimera--that there is really no such animal as the male anarchist
they have been denouncing and envying--that the wholesale
fornication of man, at least under Christian democracy, has little
more actual existence than honest advertising or sound cooking.
They have followed the porno maniacs in embracing a piece of