Page:The Way of a Virgin.djvu/27

Rh of intercourse and can never be recovered. That is a notion which has survived into civilisation, but it belongs to barbarism and not to civilisation. So far as it has any validity it lies within a sphere of erotic perversity which cannot be taken into consideration in an estimation of moral values. For most men, however, in any case, whether they realise it or not, the woman who has been initiated into the mysteries of love has a higher erotic value than the virgin, and there need be no anxiety on this ground concerning the wife who has lost her virginity.')

"It was impossible," continues Dr. Jacobus X——, "ever to find the signs of virginity among the Machacura women in Brazil, and Feldner explains the reason thus:—

"'Among them a virgin is never to be found, for this reason: that the mother from her daughter's tenderest years endeavours with the utmost care to remove all tightness of the vagina and obstacle therein. With this end in view, the leaf of a tree folded in the shape of a funnel is held in the