Not on the score of
modesty, but decency; for the care which some modest women take,
making at the same time a display of that care, not to let their
legs be seen, is as childish as immodest.*
(*Footnote. I remember to have met with a sentence, in a book of
education that made me smile. "It would be needless to caution you
against putting your hand, by chance, under your neck-handkerchief;
for a modest woman never did so!")
I could proceed still further, till I animadverted on some still
more indelicate customs, which men never fall into. Secrets are
told--where silence ought to reign; and that regard to cleanliness,
which some religious sects have, perhaps, carried too far,
especially the Essenes, amongst the Jews, by making that an insult
to God which is only an insult to humanity, is violated in a brutal
manner. How can DELICATE women obtrude on notice that part of the
animal economy, which is so very disgusting? And is it not very
rational to conclude, that the women who have not been taught to
respect the human nature of their own sex, in these particulars,
will not long respect the mere difference of sex, in their
husbands? After their maidenish bashfulness is once lost, I, in
fact, have generally observed, that women fall into old habits; and
treat their husbands as they did their sisters or female
acquaintance.
Besides, women from necessity, because their minds are not
cultivated, have recourse very often, to what I familiarly term
bodily wit; and their intimacies are of the same kind.
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