Our legislature, which always does things in a grandmotherly sort of way, thought to purify the West End and suppress the Cyprian by closing the night-houses in the Haymarket and in the streets impinging thereon. The abolishing of those squalid dens did not, indeed, result in her disestablishment, but in the betterment of the conditions under which she carried on her sad but—if the unco’ guid will permit the use of the word in this relation—necessary calling. Phryne, like the poor, we shall always have with us. The obvious duty of society, therefore, is not to take measures for her suppression, but measures for her amelioration and regulation. School Board education and an acquired knowledge of the laws of hygiene have done much for her. When one compares the toilet, the costume, and the manners, of the _demi-mondaines_ who nightly frequent the back of the dress-circle of certain houses of entertainment with the tawdry, over-painted, giggling, solicitous creature of thirty years ago, then, and only then, can one understand the gratifying change that has taken place in the habitude of this inalienable excrescence on the body politic. When the night-houses were closed, and the police instructed to keep the West End streets clear at midnight, there opened, here and there, clubs for the accommodation of Phryne and her friends. So that the closing of the frowsy saloons in which she had been wont to congregate was a blessing in disguise, and, indeed, fixes the date of the gratifying amelioration in her manners. For in the clubs a certain decorum was observed even in the ballroom, which afforded the _raison d’être_ of social rialtos of the small-hours. The proprietors saw to that; for the recurrence of disturbance or the report of sinister incidents might occasion a raid. Election to these clubs was not, as may well be supposed, a very difficult matter. One was proposed on the doorstep, seconded on the hall mat, and unanimously elected a member in the cloak-room. But the men “on the door” knew perfectly well whom to admit and whom to dismiss. The bully, the exploiter of frailty, the _souteneur_, were kept ruthlessly outside. Thus the proprietor protected at once himself and his customers. He ran a sort of _bon marché_ in fact, where no middleman operated between the goods and the patrons of the exchange.