"Not at all; they have agreed to consider certain words, for no very good reason, bad words. It is a pure convention; it has little or nothing to do with the actual meaning, because for every one of these bad words there is a paraphrase or synonym considered to be quite suitable for polite ears. Hence the feeblest creature can always produce a sensation by breaking the taboo. But women are learning how to undo this error of theirs now. The word 'damn,' for instance, is, I hear, being admitted freely into the boudoir and feminine conversation; it is even considered a rather prudish thing to object to this word. Now, men, especially feeble men, hate doing things that women do. As a consequence, men who go about saying 'damn' are now regarded by their fellow-men as only a shade less effeminate than those who go about saying 'nasty' and 'horrid.' The subtler sex will not be long in noticing what has happened to this objectionable word. When they do they will, of course, forthwith take up all the others. It will be a little startling perhaps at first, but in the end there will be no swearing left. I have no doubt there will be those who will air their petty wit on the pioneer women, but where a martyr is wanted a woman can always be found to offer herself. She will clothe herself in cursing, like the ungodly, and perish in that Nessus shirt, a martyr to pure language. And then this dull cad swearing--a mere unnecessary affectation of coarseness--will disappear. And a very good job too. "There is a pretty department of the subject which I might call grace swearing. 'Od's fish,' cried the king, when he saw the man climbing Salisbury spire; 'he shall have a patent for it--no one else shall do it.' One might call such little things Wardour Street curses. 'Od's bodkins' is a ladylike form, and 'Od's possles' a variety I met in the British Museum. Every gentleman once upon a time aspired to have his own particular grace curse, just as he liked to have his crest, and his bookplate, and his characteristic signature. It fluttered pleasantly into his conversation, as Mr. Whistler's butterfly comes into his pictures--a signature and a delight. 'Od's butterfly!' I have sometimes thought of a little book of grace-words and heraldic curses, printed with wide margins on the best of paper. Its covers should be of soft red leather, stamped with little gold flowers. It might be made a birthday book, or a pocket diary--'Daily Invocations.'