Since the connotation of the word has been altered, I venture to assert that there have been converted to the practices of seduction at least twice as many devotees as had flourished before. This statement will undoubtedly be challenged: once more, I make no doubt, the skeptical will object to my conclusions on the grounds that a scientific recluse is of necessity withdrawn from the world and its customs and is thus automatically excluded as a responsible judge of sociological problems. It might be appropriate in this preface to enter a plea for our great body of research workers who are submitted to this sort of amateur criticism. The path of the scientist is beset with difficulties of every nature; not only those in the natural line of his work, but the wholesale hostility of the uninformed layman who does not understand the hardships and delays of laboratory procedure. In this case I hope to forestall criticism by claiming to have followed a conscientious program of newspaper reading. My statement is based on the knowledge common to the layman. I cite as proof the columns of the newspapers, both the items of fact and the syndicated columns which, it would appear, devote seventy-five per cent of their space to discussion of the present generation and what to do about it.

Indeed other students of society have gone farther, much farther. Dr. Henry W. Gardner, eminent social psychologist, seven years ago devoted his doctor’s thesis to the so-called conditions of morality then prevailing on the “campus.” With highly commendable enthusiasm, this scholar spent almost the entire school year in an alder bush that grew on the edge of a secluded path known to irreverent minds as Lover’s Lane, where the youths of the university were wont to take their evening strolls. He adduced the following significant statistics:

Of the 3,061 automobiles that drove through the lane in one week, 2,009 stopped, and 2,005 turned off the motors. Of these, 154 drove on again after periods of time varying to an upper limit of five minutes. Of the remainder, 1,788 parked for periods of not less than one hour and not more than two hours and three-quarters. Dr. Gardner ascribed the fixation of these limits to the period between the beginning of darkness (which of course varied with the season) and the “coeds’” curfew.

Of the remaining sixty-three, forty-nine of the automobiles spent the entire night in the lane. The fate of the other fourteen will never be known: they were all still there on the historic night when a watchman stumbled over Dr. Gardner’s feet and took him to jail before he could explain. The vicissitudes and obstacles that stand in the scientist’s way cannot be overestimated. This deplorable incident is merely one example of the prevalent attitude.

Another of his experiments was to fix a dictaphone beneath the old oak bench at the far end of Lover’s Lane. He did this shortly after the unfortunate episode of the jail, and for eleven nights he was thus enabled to sit at his ease in the laboratory, taking notes. (I myself have much reason to thank and commend Dr. Gardner’s foresight: these notes, while they have not been used as source material, have nevertheless allowed me to corroborate many of my own conclusions.)