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is of necessity withdrawn from the world and its customs and is thus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.)