ing can bestow,"
writes Dr. G.F. Butler, of Chicago (_Love and its Affinities_,
1899, p. 83), "all that the most refined religious influence can
offer, all that the most cultivated associations can accomplish,
in one fatal moment may be obliterated. There is no room for
ethical reasoning, indeed oftentimes no consciousness of wrong,
but only Margaret's 'Es war so suess'." The same writer adds (as
had been previously remarked by Mrs. Craik and others) that among
church members it is the finer and more sensitive organizations
that are the most susceptible to sexual emotions. So far as boys
are concerned, we leave instruction in matters of sex, the most
sacred and central fact in the world, as Canon Lyttelton remarks,
to "dirty-minded school-boys, grooms, garden-boys, anyone, in
short, who at an early age may be sufficiently defiled and
sufficiently reckless to talk of them." And, so far as girls are
concerned, as Balzac long ago remarked, "a mother may bring up
her daughter severely, and cover her beneath her wings for
seventeen years; but a servant-girl can destroy that long work by
a word, even by a gesture."

The great part played by servant-girls of the lower class in the
sexual initiation of the children of the middle class has been
illustrated in dealing with "The Sexual Impulse in Women" in vol.
iii, of these _Studies_, and need not now be further discussed.
I would only here say a word, in passing, on the other side.
Often as servant-girls take this part, we must not go so far as
to say that it is the case with the majority. As regards Germany,
Dr. Alfred Kind has lately put on record his experience: "I have
_never_, in youth, heard a bad or improper word on
sex-relationships from a servant-girl, although servant-girls
followed one another in our house like sunshine and showers in
April, and there was always a relation of comradeship between us
children and the servants." As regards England, I can add that my
own youthful experiences correspond to Dr. Kind's. This is not
surprising, for one may say that in the ordinary well-conditioned
girl, though her virtue may not be developed to heroic
proportions, there is yet usually a natural respect for the
innocence of children, a natural sexual indifference to them, and
a natural expectation that the male should take the act