l go to the
men's rooms and await them in their beds. With this inclination
to sexual intercourse, it is not surprising that many believe
that after sixteen no girl is a virgin. Unchastity among the
rural laboring classes is universal, and equally pronounced in
both sexes" (op. cit., vol. i, 218).

Among women of the educated classes the conditions are somewhat
different. Restraints, both internal and external, are very much
greater. Virginity, at all events in its physical fact, is
retained, for the most part, till long past girlhood, and when it
is lost that loss is concealed with a scrupulous care and
prudence unknown to the working-classes. Yet the fundamental
tendencies remain the same. So far as England is concerned,
Geoffrey Mortimer quite truly writes (_Chapters on Human Love_,
1898, p. 117) that the two groups of (1) women who live in
constant secret association with a single lover, and (2) women
who give themselves to men, without fear, from the force of their
passions, are "much larger than is generally supposed. In all
classes of society there are women who are only virgins by
repute. Many have borne children without being even suspected of
cohabitation; but the majority adopt methods of preventing
conception. A doctor in a small provincial town declared to me
that such irregular intimacies were the rule, and not by any
means the exception in his district." As regards Germany, a lady
doctor, Frau Adams-Lehmann, states in a volume of the
Transactions of the German Society for Combating Venereal Disease
(_Sexualpaedagogik_, p. 271): "I can say that during consultation
hours I see very few virgins over thirty. These women," she adds,
"are sensible, courageous and natural, often the best of their
sex; and we ought to give them our moral support. They are
working towards a new age."

It is frequently stated that the pronounced tendency witnessed at the
present time to dispense as long as possible with the formal ceremony of
binding marriage is unfortunate because it places women in a
disadvantageous position. In so far as the social environment in which she
lives views with disapproval sexual relationship without formal marriage,
the statement is obviously to that extent true, though it must be
remarked, on the other hand, that when social opinion strongly favors
legal marriage it acts as a c