influence of a dreary climate and monotonous labor in stimulating the appetite for a “life of pleasure.”  In France, as shown by a map in Parent-Duchatelet’s work (vol. i, pp. 37-64, 1857), if the country is divided into five zones, on the whole running east and west, there is a steady and progressive decrease in the number of prostitutes each zone sends to Paris, as we descend southwards.  Little more than a third seem to belong to Paris, and, as in America, it is the serious and hard-working North, with its relatively cold climate, which furnishes the largest contingent; even in old France, Dufour remarks (op. cit., vol. iv, Ch.  XV), prostitution, as the fabliaux and romans show, was less infamous in the langue d’oil than in the langue d’oc, so that they were doubtless rare in the South.  At a later period Reuss states (La Prostitution, p. 12) that “nearly all the prostitutes of Paris come from the provinces.”  Jeannel found that of one thousand Bordeaux prostitutes only forty-six belonged to the city itself, and Potton (Appendix to Parent-Duchatelet, vol. ii, p. 446) states that of nearly four thousand Lyons prostitutes only 376 belonged to Lyons.  In Vienna, in 1873, Schrank remarks that of over 1500 prostitutes only 615 were born in Vienna.  The general rule, it will be seen, though the variations are wide, is that little more than a third of a city’s prostitutes are children of the city.

It is interesting to note that this tendency of the prostitute to reach cities from afar, this migratory tendency—­which they nowadays share with waiters—­is no merely modern phenomenon.  “There are few cities in Lombardy, or France, or Gaul,” wrote St. Boniface nearly twelve centuries ago, “in which there is not an adulteress or prostitute of the English nation,” and the Saint attributes this to the custom of going on pilgrimage to foreign shrines.  At the present time there is no marked English element among Continental prostitutes.  Thus in Paris, according to Reuss (La Prostitution, p. 12), the foreign prostitutes in decreasing order are Belgian, German (Alsace-Lorraine), Swiss (especially Geneva), Italian, Spanish, and only then English.  Connoisseurs in this matter say, indeed, that the English prostitute, as compared with her Continental (and especially French) sister, fails to show to advantage, being usually grasping as regards money and deficient in charm.

It is the appeal of civilization, though not of what is finest and best in civilization, which more than any other motive, calls women to the career of a prostitute.  It is now necessary to point out that for the man also, the same appeal makes itself felt in the person of the prostitute.  The common and ignorant assumption that prostitution exists to satisfy the gross sensuality of the young unmarried man, and that if he is taught to bridle gross sexual impulse or induced to marry early the prostitute must be idle, is altogether incorrect.