were a jest, but which he felt very
strongly had its serious side, and was involved with the happiness or
suffering of multitudes of youthful persons who die without telling their
secret:

How many young men have a mortal fear of woman, as woman, which they
never overcome, and in consequence of which the attraction which draws
man towards her, as strong in them as in others,--oftentimes, in virtue
of their peculiarly sensitive organizations, more potent in them than in
others of like age and conditions,--in consequence of which fear, this
attraction is completely neutralized, and all the possibilities of
doubled and indefinitely extended life depending upon it are left
unrealized! Think what numbers of young men in Catholic countries devote
themselves to lives of celibacy. Think how many young men lose all their
confidence in the presence of the young woman to whom they are most
attracted, and at last steal away from a companionship which it is
rapture to dream of and torture to endure, so does the presence of the
beloved object paralyze all the powers of expression. Sorcerers have in
all time and countries played on the hopes and terrors of lovers. Once
let loose a strong impulse on the centre of inhibition, and the warrior
who had faced bayonets and batteries becomes a coward whom the
well-dressed hero of the ball-room and leader of the German will put to
ignominious flight in five minutes of easy, audacious familiarity with
his lady-love.

Yes, the doctor went on with his reflections, I do not know that I have
seen the term Gynophobia before I opened this manuscript, but I have seen
the malady many times. Only one word has stood between many a pair of
young people and their lifelong happiness, and that word has got as far
as the lips, but the lips trembled and would not, could not, shape that
little word. All young women are not like Coleridge's Genevieve, who
knew how to help her lover out of his difficulty, and said yes before he
had asked for an answer. So the wave which was to have wafted them on to
the shore of Elysium has just failed of landing them, and back they have
been drawn into the desolate ocean to meet no more on earth.

Love is the master-key, he went on thinking, love is the master-key that
opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of
all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!--not only
the historic wonder of beauty, that "burnt the topless towers o