young peasant women than among those of better
social class, who often avoid, under all circumstances, the
necessity for using any definite name.

Singular as it may seem, the Romans, who in their literature
impress us by their vigorous and naked grip of the most private
facts of life, showed in familiar intercourse a dread of obscene
language--a dread ultimately founded, it is evident, on religious
grounds--far exceeding that which prevails among ourselves to-day
in civilization. "It is remarkable," Dufour observes, "that the
prostitutes of ancient Rome would have blushed to say an indecent
word in public. The little tender words used between lovers and
their mistresses were not less correct and innocent when the
mistress was a courtesan and the lover an erotic poet. He called
her his rose, his queen, his goddess, his dove, his light, his
star, and she replied by calling him her jewel, her honey, her
bird, her ambrosia, the apple of her eye, and never with any
licentious interjection, but only 'I will love!' (_Amabo_), a
frequent exclamation, summing up a whole life and vocation. When
intimate relations began, they treated each other as 'brother'
and 'sister.' These appellations were common among the humblest
and the proudest courtesans alike." (Dufour, _Histoire de la
Prostitution_, vol. ii, p. 78.) So excessive was the Roman horror
of obscenity that even physicians were compelled to use a
euphemism for _urina_, and though the _urinal_ or _vas urinarium_
was openly used at the dining-table (following a custom
introduced by the Sybarites, according to Athenaeus, Book XII,
cap. 17), the decorous guest could not ask for it by name, but
only by a snap of the fingers (Dufour, op. cit., vol. ii, p.
174).

In modern Europe, as seems fairly evident from the early
realistic dramatic literature of various countries, no special
horror of speaking plainly regarding the sacro-pubic regions and
their functions existed among the general population until the
seventeenth century. There is, however, one marked exception.
Such a feeling clearly existed as regards menstruation. It is not
difficult to see why it should have begun at this function. We
have here not only a function confined to one sex and, therefore,
easily lending itself to a vocabulary confined to one sex; but,
what is