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VIRGINITY AND ITS TRADITIONS. "……When the girl has to do later with a negro husband, an astringent lotion will render the bride a pseudo-virgin. The deceived husband, not having the anatomical knowledge necessary to assure himself of the real existence of the signs of virginity, feels a difficulty in copulating, and is far from suspecting any trick.

"Does not much the same kind of thing prevail also in Europe? How many girls who have been deflowered get married without their husband ever suspecting anything, although he has not the same physical disadvantages that the black has to prevent his seeing through the trick? Is it to this amorous blindness that the Greeks and Romans alluded when they represented Cupid with a bandage over his eyes? One is almost tempted to believe it.

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