ree is very frequently found among prostitutes. It
would be plausible, doubtless, to say that every woman who gives
her virginity in exchange for an inadequate return is an
imbecile. If she gives herself for love, she has, at the worst,
made a foolish mistake, such as the young and inexperienced may
at any time make. But if she deliberately proposes to sell
herself, and does so for nothing or next to nothing, the case is
altered. The experiences of Commenge in Paris are instructive on
this point. "For many young girls," he writes, "modesty has no
existence, they experience no emotion in showing themselves
completely undressed, they abandon themselves to any chance
individual whom they will never see again. They attach no
importance to their virginity; they are deflowered under the
strangest conditions, without the least thought or care about the
act they are accomplishing. No sentiment, no calculation, pushes
them into a man's arms. They let themselves go without reflexion
and without motive, in an almost animal manner, from indifference
and without pleasure." He was acquainted with forty-five girls
between the ages of twelve and seventeen who were deflowered by
chance strangers whom they never met again; they lost their
virginity, in Dumas's phrase, as they lost their milk-teeth, and
could give no plausible account of the loss. A girl of fifteen,
mentioned by Commenge, living with her parents who supplied all
her wants, lost her virginity by casually meeting a man who
offered her two francs if she would go with him; she did so
without demur and soon begun to accost men on her own account. A
girl of fourteen, also living comfortably with her parents,
sacrificed her virginity at a fair in return for a glass of beer,
and henceforth begun to associate with prostitutes. Another girl
of the same age, at a local fete, wishing to go round on the
hobby horse, spontaneously offered herself to the man directing
the machinery for the pleasure of a ride. Yet another girl, of
fifteen, at another fete, offered her virginity in return for the
same momentary joy (Commenge, _Prostitution Clandestine_, 1897,
pp. 101 et seq.). In the United States, Dr. W. Travis Gibb,
examining physician to the New York Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children, bears similar testimony to the fact that in