is narrated of Italian nuns who had been veiled even from
each other for half a lifetime that when turned out of their convents
they suffered from exposing their faces the same shame that other women
would suffer from far greater exposure. It could not be otherwise.
Mohammedan women, if surprised when bathing, cover first the face. They
are distinguished from non-Mohammedan women by the veil; therefore this
covering is to them most important. Chinese women, whose feet have been
compressed, consider it indecent to expose them. Within a generation the
public latrines in the cities of continental Europe have been made far
more secluded and private than they formerly were. Within ten years
there has been a great change of standard as to the propriety of
spitting. Beyond the domain of propriety lie the domains of politeness,
courtesy, good manners, seemliness, breeding, and good form. The
definition depends on where the line is drawn. That point is always
conventional. It is a matter of tradition and social contact to learn
where it lies. It never can be formulated. Habit must form a feeling or
taste by which new cases can be decided. There are persons and classes
who possess such social prestige that they can alter the line of
definition a small distance and get the change taken up into the mores,
but it is the mores which always contain and carry on the definitions
and standards. Therefore it is to the mores that we must look to find
the determining causes or motives, the field of origin, the corrective
or corrupting influences, and the educative operations, which account
for all the immense and contradictory variety of the folkways, under
chastity, decency, modesty, propriety, etc.

+443. Chastity.+ An Australian husband assumes that his wife has been
unfaithful to him if she has had opportunity. In most tribes women are
not allowed to converse or have any relations whatever with any men but
their husbands, even with their own grown-up brothers.[1383] Veth[1384]
thinks that the observance of the sex taboo by Dyak wives has been
exaggerated, but that, at least on the west coast, it is better than
that of the Malay women. The young unmarried women among the sea Dyaks
take great license, and the custom of lending daughters exists, but such
customs are unknown on the west coast. On the Andaman Islands there is
no sex taboo for the unmarried and they use license. The girls are
modest, and when married conform to the taboo of ma