[208] H. Lippert, in his book on prostitution in Hamburg, laid much stress on the craving for dress and adornment as a factor of prostitution, and Bloch (Das Sexualleben unsurer Zeit, p. 372) considers that this factor is usually underestimated, and that it exerts an especially powerful influence on servants.

[209] Since this was written the influence of several generations of town-life in immunizing a stock to the evils of that life (though without reference to prostitution) has been set forth by Reibmayr, Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes und Genies, 1908, vol. ii, pp. 73 et seq.

[210] In France this intimacy is embodied in the delicious privilege of tutoiement.  “The mystery of tutoiement!” exclaims Ernest La Jennesse in L’Holocauste: “Barriers broken down, veils drawn away, and the ease of existence!  At a time when I was very lonely, and trying to grow accustomed to Paris and to misfortune, I would go miles—­on foot, naturally—­to see a girl cousin and an aunt, merely to have something to tutoyer.  Sometimes they were not at home, and I had to come back with my tu, my thirst for confidence and familiarity and brotherliness.”

[211] For some facts and references to the extensive literature concerning this trade, see, e.g., Bloch, Das Sexualleben Unserer Zeit, pp. 374-376; also K.M.  Baer, Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft, Sept., 1908; Paulucci de Calboli, Nuova Antologia, April, 1902.

[212] These considerations do not, it is true, apply to many kinds of sexual perverts who form an important proportion of the clients of brothels.  These can frequently find what they crave inside a brothel much more easily than outside.

[213] Thus Charles Booth, in his great work on Life and Labor in London, final volume (p. 128), recommends that “houses of accommodation,” instead of being hunted out, should be tolerated as a step towards the suppression of brothels.

[214] “Towns like Woolwich, Aldershot, Portsmouth, Plymouth,” it has been said, “abound with wretched, filthy monsters that bear no resemblance to women; but it is drink, scorn, brutality and disease which have reduced them to this state, not the mere fact of associating with men.”

[215] “The contract of prostitution in the opinion of prostitutes themselves,” Bernaldo de Quiros and Llanas Aguilaniedo remark (La Mala Vida en Madrid, p. 254), “cannot be assimilated to a sale, nor to a contract of work, nor to any other form of barter recognized by the civil law.  They consider that in these pacts there always enters an element which makes it much more like a gift in a matter in which no payment could be adequate.  ‘A woman’s body is without price’ is an axiom of prostitution.  The money placed in the hands of her who procures the satisfaction of sexual desire is not the price of the act, but an offering which the priestess of Venus applies to her maintenance.”  To the Spaniard, it is true, every transaction which resembles trade is repugnant, but the principle underlying this feeling holds good of prostitution generally.