is, comparatively, an infrequent occurrence, but under its
influence the unfortunate victims are guilty of startling vagaries. The
recent case of Alice Mitchell, who killed Miss Ward, at Memphis, Tenn.,
is an example of pronounced viraginity. We see daily in the newspapers
accounts of women who masquerade as men, and history abounds in like
instances. The celebrated writer Count Sandor V. was a woman who posed
as a man, and who was in fact Sarolta (Charlotte), Countess V. "Among
many foolish things that her father encouraged in her was the fact that
he brought her up as a boy, called her Sandor, allowed her to ride,
drive, and hunt, admiring her muscular energy." At the age of thirteen
she ran away from school, where she had been sent by her mother, and
returned home. "Sarolta returned to her mother, who, however, could do
nothing and was compelled to allow her daughter to again become Sandor,
wear male clothes, and, at least once a year, to fall in love with
persons of her own sex."

Mothers, early in life, though not from any sense of danger to their
daughters, begin to eradicate the tom-boy inclinations in their female
children; hence the comparative infrequency of viraginity. The
congenital viragint will always remain somewhat masculine in her tastes
and ideas, but her inclinations and desires having been turned toward
femininity early in life, she will escape the horrors of complete
viraginity or gynandry. The victim of effemination, however, is saved by
no such accidental forethought. The ignorant mother fosters feminine
inclinations and desires in her effeminate son until his psychic being
becomes entirely changed, and not even the establishment of _vita
sexualis_ will save him from effemination.

An only son, who is in the least degree neurasthenic, runs the risk of
becoming an effeminant under the tutelage of a loving but ignorant
mother who encourages his feminine tastes and inclinations. A young man
of my acquaintance, who is an only son, is so situated. This young man
devotes his entire attention to matters of the toilet. He paints his
cheeks and powders his face; even his eyebrows and eyelashes are
anointed with some dark-colored ointment or pomade.

Effemination and viraginity are more prevalent in the Old World than in
the United States. The civilization and settlement of the United States
are, comparatively speaking, new. The people are, as yet, a young,
strong, and vigorous nation. Years of luxury an