Thus
in Berlin, not long ago, a girl who was mistress to a rich
cavalry officer and supported by him, during the illness of the
officer accidentally met a man whom she had formerly known, and
once or twice invited him to see her, receiving from him presents
in money. This somehow came to the knowledge of the police, and
she was arrested and sentenced to one day's imprisonment as an
unregistered prostitute. On appeal, however, the sentence was
annulled. Liszt, in his _Strafrecht_, lays it down that a girl
who obtains whole or part of her income from "fixed
relationships" is not practicing unchastity for gain in the sense
of the German law (_Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Jahrgang 1,
Heft 9, p. 345).

It is not altogether easy to explain the origin of the systematized
professional prostitution with the existence of which we are familiar in
civilization. The amateur kind of prostitution which has sometimes been
noted among primitive peoples--the fact, that is, that a man may give a
woman a present in seeking to persuade her to allow him to have
intercourse with her--is really not prostitution as we understand it. The
present in such a case is merely part of a kind of courtship leading to a
temporary relationship. The woman more or less retains her social position
and is not forced to make an avocation of selling herself because
henceforth no other career is possible to her. When Cook came to New
Zealand his men found that the women were not impregnable, "but the terms
and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among us,"
and according "to their notions the agreement was as innocent." The
consent of the woman's friends was necessary, and when the preliminaries
were settled it was also necessary to treat this "Juliet of a night" with
"the same delicacy as is here required with the wife for life, and the
lover who presumed to take any liberties by which this was violated was
sure to be disappointed."[127] In some of the Melanesian Islands, it is
said that women would sometimes become prostitutes, or on account of their
bad conduct be forced to become prostitutes for a time; they were not,
however, particularly despised, and when they had in this way accumulated
a certain amount of property they could marry well, after which it would
not be proper to refer to their former career.[128]

When prostitution first arises among a primitive people it sometimes
happen