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If so, what other codes shall we include? I say nothing of the wayward rich because there are not so many of them, and whatever their habits, the burden of folly falls not on them, but on the poor. I have ignored the girls of high standards led astray -- the Marguerites and Effie Deans of romance, for they present no psychological riddle. Their codes are usual. They have merely been lured from them by emotion. And to introduce a pleasant note let it be said that although they suffer acutely for a time, their story (the novelists notwithstanding) is likely to end happily. Mr. Woolworth fortunately provides wedding rings within the compass of the most modest purse, and some appropriate man is usually glad to marry the pleasant young "widow" and adopt her child.

I have not included a study of neurotic sex deviations from the normal, for that is a chapter in itself. I have not even talked about the feeble-minded, for though many prostitutes are undoubtedly feeble-minded or near it, there are also many feebleminded girls who are not prostitutes. Just as the dullest matron may be armor-plated against infidelity, so her equally dull daughter may be genuinely horrified at anything not "nice," if she has been brought up that way. If sufficiently tempted, she may violate her conscience, to be sure, but so may her more gifted sister. The psychological fact remains that she has one, and that it conforms to a socially acceptable standard.

I am far from hazarding an opinion as to what is the proper sex code for anyone, man or woman. But experience shows this: that unless a girl without means can cultivate the habit, when still young, of living on what she earns, or on what is provided by someone legitimately responsible for her, she is certain to become an economic parasite, to pass on her practices to her younger mates, as children bequeath their hopscotch and their marbles, and eventually, like an unwholesome bird that befouls the nest, to defile her own young. Even the Charitys are not so independent as they boast. Their joy-rides, their shows, and their suppers are payment of a substantial sort. There is nothing to hold any of them from the pursuit of luxuries beyond their purses, save only a certain prejudice in favor of chastity. If this prejudice is absent from their culture, can it be hung like an artificial arm where there is not even a joint to strap it to? Can such girls, and their brothers, ever be made to feel our folkways? If so, how shall we begin? To what emotions shall we appeal?

Do not tell the girls that if they are vicious they will never marry, for they all do. Do not tell them that they will not marry as good a type of man as they would have married anyway, for they will. Do not tell them that other people do not regard what they do as lightly as they do themselves, for their code is but the reflection of their group, and their own group is their world. Do not try to shame them by saying that promiscuity is a trait of dull women, for they will readily agree. They will insist further that only the rich girl can afford to be dull, untrained, and yet fastidious. Do not try to scare them with the probable consequences to their health, for hygiene as well as chastity is absent from their tradition: a short life and a merry one will be their answer. Do not say that it is illegal, but contemplate the force in that argument the next time you are served with a cocktail.

Curiously enough, the ethical doctrine of the Earl of Shaftesbury, that bad morals are bad taste, comes the nearest to their understanding. Most of them agree that noisy gobbling of soup is not nice. And sometimes we look out of the window at an alley cat of loose morals, and they laugh ruefully at the resemblance. They hate to think that they look just like that to anybody. And if a reduction of the moral law to that of prowling cats and noisy soup is a decking out of that stern goddess in rather scanty drapery, we must cut our garments from what material we have, on the principle that any drapery is better than none at all.

Thus far, experience points to the fact that the acquiring of a sex code takes place along about the time that the individual acquires language. Unless the language is learned before, say, the age of ten, it is never the mother tongue. It may be learned with an effort, and lived by if necessary, but it will not be felt. It will show an accent, and in moments of stress, the language of infancy will take its place. I have been told of an English lady who, upon meeting a reformed cannibal, congratulated him upon his change of diet.

"You no longer believe in cannibalism?" she asked.

"I do not," he replied with a dignified but appraising glance. "Nevertheless," he added, "nothing will ever taste so good as a plump little English woman's thumb!"

I am told that the lady moved on rather hastily; and if so, her instincts were entirely sound. No technic can be considered learned unless the knowledge has got past the cerebrum, and is accepted by the spinal cord, the muscles, and the solar plexus. Only then will it operate quickly enough to be of value. If the cannibal's brain had accepted the new code, but the nerves of his stomach had not, he was like our young wantons, whose experience may tell them that their habits needed mending, but whose nervous systems do not yet rise in protest against so simple a method of getting a fur coat as prostituting for it.