Page:Sexology.djvu/36

 the greatest dangers, not only to the health of mind and body, but even to chastity itself. The statistics of prostitution abundantly prove the correctness of this assertion, and show the ruinous vanity of mothers who inoculate their daughters with this ridiculous rivalry almost with the first words they are taught to lisp. Whatever pride may actuate a mother to decorate her little daughters with the flummery of fashion, should be carefully explained to them as the requirement of neatness and propriety. Surely, a little harmless equivocation here were necessary for those who will engage in this preposterous contest. It were far more honest, however, as well as simply decent, to limit the outward adornment of girls entirely to the requirements of comfort and scrupulous neatness.

Of late years a new and horrible rivalry has arisen—that of children's parties. It is now a common occurrence to hold these entertainments for little children, at which the extravagances and dissipations of their elders are imitated to the very letter. Each fond matron seeks to excel her acquaintances in the mimic pomp and fashion displayed, and a modern child's party differs from others only in the size of the dramatis personce. The newspapers pander to the unnatural performance, and the superb toilets of the misses and exquisite make-up of the masters are elaborately blazoned in the column of "Fashionable Gossip." Children from eight to thirteen are thus initiated in the mysteries of dissipation, including flirtation and liaisons. We know of many who have attended from three to twenty of these diabolical inventions in the course of a single "season." "Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad."

It is well-nigh impossible for a pure-minded and innocent young girl to avoid listening to or beholding, if she do not finally participate in, the debasing conversations and