A degree of doubt was cast upon the Forbisher-Laroche figures in my subsequent association with Dave, owing to the fact that he quoted the same authority on so many other matters--the breeding rate of hamsters, for example, the relative climbing efficiencies of various kite designs, and the esoteric causes of giddiness. It occurred to me that "Forbisher-Laroche" might serve my lawyer friend in lieu of the name of an authority or researcher which he could not call to mind--or even in lieu of better authority than his own. This, however, was remarkably good; so the table, even if specious, may be regarded as sound from the order-of-magnitude standpoint. Among the nine objections to association with prostitutes were at least two (Dave said) which could be regarded as obsolete: the dangers of disease and of pregnancy. Of the remaining seven, only two more (he claimed) could be regarded as rational by the man of ethical detachment--one aesthetic; the other, the practical matter of costs. The rest were mere excursions into "morals"--a contradiction in itself since, were we to apply any genuine morality to sex and sexual conduct, we should have to begin by contemplating the field with simple honesty--a process in which the "Moralistical" objections would dissolve instanter, so he stated. Of the two objections worth considering, then, one was the expense--a matter to be pondered in all deals and negotiations. The other was that old chestnut which appears in the endless series of candid books of advice to boys, books advertised as providing "complete sex enlightenment," books which, in sum, horribly frighten their readers and leave them, as a rule, incapable of any real enlightenment for the rest of their lives. "Would you," such books fiercely inquire, "walk into a cheap hotel, find that the stranger before you had left the tub filled with his dirty bath water, and immerse yourself in it?" This, in short, is the _aesthetic_ objection. It contains certain fallacies. One is the implied idea that sex relations are equivalent to ablution--that they are designed to transfer from each individual to the other such foreign matter as may have accumulated on his or her person. There is the further implication that such individuals are thereafter unable to cleanse themselves of the alleged spotting and staining supposedly got in such a fashion. Carried to its logical conclusion, this thought would force hotels, as just one example, to discard a bathtub with the checking out of each guest. Industry could not keep up with such tub-scrapping. In other words, the question is unfairly put. If cleaning one's self is to be admitted as a pertinent analogue for love-making, the question should read, "Would you use the _bathtub_ in a cheap hotel?" And why necessarily cheap? "Would you," the interrogator should ask in all equity, "dawdle voluptuously in the shining, sunken, marble tub of the most gaudy hostelry on Park Avenue?"