Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/30

 this company I shall find the challengers, if there is a challenge. What are they calling in question? The idea of chastity—whose idea of chastity? Cornelia's idea, the idea of all nice people—What is the idea of all nice people regarding chastity? Look in the Dictionary, the record of good usage—Here it is: "Innocence of unlawful sexual intercourse." As a history of usage, the Dictionary should add in parenthesis: "This is a virtue assumed to be present in all members of the female sex in good and regular standing."

Here we have a simple and definite idea to work upon: Chastity is a virtue assumed to be present in all members of the female sex in good and regular standing. Who first gave currency to that idea? Our friends the Victorians? Oh, no! It is astonishing how many so-called Victorian ideas, delicate and fragile, can be found thriving in manlier ages, in old robust books like Don Juan and Tom Jones, and in the drama of that "den of lions," the Renaissance. How they valued this virtue—those "lions" of the Renaissance! How they valued this virtue in their wives! What praise they had for its possessors—"chaste as the icicle that's curded by the frost from purest snow and hangs on Dian's temple"! Shakespeare valiantly