alcohol. No prostitute of anything resembling normal intelligence is
under the slightest duress; she is perfectly free to abandon her trade
and go into a shop or factory or into domestic service whenever the
impulse strikes her; all the prevailing gabble about white slave jails
and kidnappers comes from pious rogues who make a living by
feeding such nonsense to the credulous. So long as the average
prostitute is able to make a good living, she is quite content with her
lot, and disposed to contrast it egotistically with the slavery of her
virtuous sisters. If she complains of it, then you may be sure that
her success is below her expectations. A starving lawyer always
sees injustice, in the courts. A bad physician is a bitter critic of
Ehrlich and Pasteur. And when a suburban clergyman is forced out
of his cure by a vestry-room revolution be almost invariably
concludes that the sinfulness of man is incurable, and
sometimes he even begins to doubt some of the typographical errors
in Holy Writ.


The high value set upon virginity by men, whose esteem of it is
based upon a mixture of vanity and voluptuousness, causes many
women to guard it in their own persons with a jealousy far beyond
their private inclinations and interests. It is their theory that the loss
of it would materially impair their chances of marriage. This theory
is not supported by the facts. The truth is that the woman who
sacrifices her chastity, everything else being equal, stands a much
better chance of making a creditable marriage than the woman who
remains chaste. This is especially true of women of the lower
economic classes. At once they come into contact, hitherto socially
difficult and sometimes almost impossible, with men of higher
classes, and begin to take on, with the curious facility of their sex,