Conventions are, doubtless, always rather ridiculous, inevitably a shackle upon the free motions of the soul, being imposed by fear. But it will be remembered that we, in America, with a vast amount of freedom of intersexual association, have thus far only begun to dispense with the locks and bars and whippings and chaperons which were the appurtenances of a physical segregation of the sexes; the vast paraphernalia of psychic segregation, including sexual taboos which hark back to the primeval darkness, are with us still. Our minds are habituated to unreasonable fears in all matters concerning the relations of the sexes. For a long time, extra-marital friendships of men and women may be expected to be hedged about with elaborate and specific permissions, for the sake of keeping them under social control. Yet these conventions may be very convenient; and however irksome they may seem to the free spirits of a future day, they may still be such as would appear to us generously libertarian. To-day, in the absence of such conventions, it does not suffice that a man and woman, too well married to be afraid of extra-marital friendships, grant them to each other by private treaty; relatives, friends, and neighbors do not fail to be duly alarmed. Extra-marital friendship exists in an atmosphere of social suspicion which a few conventions would go far to alleviate. As an example in a different field, the convention with regard to dancing may be adduced. If dancing were not a general custom, if it were the enlightened practice of an advanced few, how peculiar and suspicious would seem the desire of Mr. X and Mrs. Y to embrace each other to music; and how scandalized the neighbors would be to hear that they _did_! No one would rest until the pair had been driven into an elopement. We build huge palaces for the kind of happy communion which dancing furnishes; we tend more and more to behave like civilized beings about the impulses which are thus given scope. We are less socially hospitable to the impulses of friendship between men and women.