Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/155

The Repeal of Reticence great deal of it is given in the wrong way, at the wrong time, by the wrong people. Who made Mrs. Pankhurst our nursery governess, and put us in her hands for schooling? We might safely laugh at and ignore these unsolicited exhortations, were it not that the crude detailing of matters offensive to modesty is as hurtful to the young as it is wearisome to the old. Does it never occur to the women, who are now engaged in telling the world what the world has known since the days of Nineveh, that more legitimate, and, on the whole, more enlightened avenues exist for the distribution of such knowledge?

The "Conspiracy of Silence" is broken. Of that no one can doubt. The phrase may be suffered to lapse into oblivion. In its day it was a menace, and few of us would now advocate the deliberate 139