A visit to the
women's baths left a no less melancholy impression.
There were children of both sexes, girls, women, and
elderly matrons. The poor children! how should they in
after life understand what is meant by modesty and
purity, when they are accustomed from their infancy to
witness such scenes, and listen to such conversation?"
These Orientals are too coarse-fibred to appreciate the spotless,
peach-down purity which in our ideal is a maiden's supreme charm. They
do not care to prolong, even for a year what to us seems the sweetest,
loveliest period of life, the time of artless, innocent maidenhood.
They cannot admire a rose for its fragrant beauty, but must needs
regard it as a thing to be picked at once and used to gratify their
appetite. Nay, they cannot even wait till it is a full-blown rose, but
must destroy the lovely bud. The "civilized" Hindoos, who are allowed
legally to sacrifice girls to their lusts before the poor victims have
reached the age of puberty, are really on a level with the African
savages who indulge in the same practice. An unsophisticated reader of
_Kalidasa_ might find in the King's comparison of Sakuntala to "a
flower that no one has smelt, a sprig that no one has plucked, a pearl
that has not yet been pierced," a recognition of the charm of maiden
purity.
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