New Orleans daily crescent., 1866-10-15
. cartl r.,o...l ll9r. lcharie. Reale,
TIE PRuRIENr rRUpE.

9AhHEaafsGs anu
Pr1de. Modesty in manor woman shows itself by
o certain asloWness to put foul construction on
things, and also by ely shunning indell
cate matters and discussions, The Pruriens
Prude 2 on the contrary ltehss 70 attract atten,
ton BY . parade of mpdesty (which Is, the, mild
form Of The diseassl, or even By Tashiy accusing
others Of psistHncy. (and this is the noxious
formsl
yom dictionaryis is that you have inserted no
improper W0rds.n
What vou looked for them, naadam?n said
the Doctor.
Here was ~ a Prurient Prude that would have
taken In an ordinary photographer.
The ysickedar Kind Of :fPrrrieht Rruden has
committed great fayages ip our English railways,
where the carriages you must know, are small
and seldom filed Respectable men found them,
selves alone witta shy looking female add dressed
q ciyil remark to her, were accused the end Of
the of attempting her virtue, and punished
nnjlstiy, or else had to buy her of last as
1 learn from an article in the Saturday Review,
many worthy men refused to sit in carriage
where there was woman only such terror
had the ttPrurient PrudeH inspired iR manly
breasts. The last of these heroines, how
ever, came to grief !; her victim showed fight;
submitted to trial and set the police on her; she
proved to be, as any one yersed in, human nature
could have foTetold, woman of remarkable loose
morals; and she is at this moment expiating her
three Ps--Prndery, z Prarience and PerJury--in
one Of her mSjestyls jaiis,
Y6ftfH &RO VII DdEUAl6h Mtbo lu0EfAy
ruined andseparated from his wife by of these
ladies'. He was from the country, and by force. of
habit made his toilet nearer the window than o
Londoner would. AssPrurient Pruden lurked op-
spoaite and watched him repeatedly which s just
what no modest woman would haYe done once
and, interpreting each unguarded action by the
light of her own actually brought
"a criminal charge againt the poor soul. me
charge fell to the ground the moment it was sfted;
but IN the meantime what agony had the "Pru-
rient Prlde'i inflicted on an innocent family 7
Unfortunately the. Il & Rtarient PrndeD'' is not
confined to the female sex. II Is not to pc found
among men Of masculine pursuits but i exists
among writer's, Examples divorce case. unfit
for publication, il reported by all the English
Journals. Next day, instead OF beng asio wed ito
die, it ia renewed id leader phe writerSof this
ing publicly to fiftlG4 f1T 81 The ridiculous mis-
use Of this term where not filth, but crime is in
tended, is an infall lible sign of dirty mind, and
marks the grurient Prude$,, this flourish
of prudeEg Pruricns goes with gustq into the de-
tails, Hhich he had just said were unfit for pub
EIicatien. Take down your file of glishjournals,
and Ynu Willeoon lay Yonr hand on this variety of
the Pr1rient Prnde. Z a harmless little hnmbug
though.
But, as among women, so among writer's, the
ffprurent Prudea becomes, a less transparent and
more dangerous imposter when, strong in the
shelter of Anonymous, which hides from the pub
lie his eHn dissolute life and dtohseene conyersa-
ton he reads his neighhor by the light of his own
takes the form of slander, and assassinates the
fair fame Of his moral, intellectual and social
superior.
Now the Eve or six g Prurient Prudes Z who
defile the American press have lately selected me
Of all persons, for their victim. They are trying
hard to make the American public believe two
Inonstfous falsehoods: first, that they are pure,
minded men; secondly, that am an impure
writer.
Ofioourse if thesefive or six tsPrurient Prudes"
had The courage to do as do, sign their names to
their personalities, their names and their charac-
teFs would be an the defense should need. But,
by withholding their signatures; they give the
same weight to their statements that an honest
man gives by appending his signature, and compel
me, ont of respect to the American public, whose
esteem value, to depart from the usual practice
rary vermin wlth,a reply The case, then, stands
thus; f have produced 9 story called Griffith
.Gaunt.i This storm has, ever since December,
1865, aoated The Argosy, an English periodical,
and has been eagerly read in the pages of the
Atlantic Monthly.
n. this tale have to deal, as an artist and a
scholar, with the very period Henry Fielding has
desoribed-to the satisfaction Of prurient prudes-
q period il which manners and speech were some
What hlunter than nowadays; and y have TO por-
tray a great and terrible passion, jealouay, aud
show its nanifOld consequences, Of which even
bgamy lin my story is ones and that without any
violation of probability Then i proceed to de-
piet the misery inflicted on three persons by big
amy, which I denounee as crime In my double
character Of Inuralist and artist present not the
delusive shadow Of biganly but its substance.
The consequence. is, that instead OF. shedding a
mild luster over bigamy, I Oil my readers with q
horror of bigamy. and q wholesome Indignation
against my principal male character. SO far as
have shown him. OF course, Griffith Gaunt,
Ike Hard Cash. is not ehild's book, nor a. lit
tle girls book tits an ambitious story, in which
present the great passions that poets have sung
with applaud in all ages it Is not. q boatful of
paps but am not paid the price Of pap. By the
very nature Of my theme, have been compelled
now and then to tread on delicate ground; but /
have trodden lightly and passed on swiftly, and
so will all the pure-minded men and women who
read me.
| No really modest woman will ever suffer any
thing by reading Griffith Gaunt, unless. indeed,
she returns b0 its pernsal unsexeds and filled with
prurent curiosity, by the foul interpretations of
the I. Prurient Prude.f Then come a handful of
serbblefs whose lives are loose and their conYer-
5ation obscene they take my teXta and read it, not
by its avn light, hut ystlie light of their own foul
itnagnations; and, having 80 defled it by mixing
their ewn filthy minds upon it, they sit in judgs
ment on the eompeund. TO these imposters ! say
no oslnore. The two words Prurient Prude,P will
soon run round the Union and render its fcitizens
somewhat less gnllible by that class of impostor.
One person, however, has slandered me SO mali-
eiously aHdssp busilX, that am compelled to no.
tiue him individually, The more SO as am about
tg sue an weekly for merely quoting him
The editor8of a New Yerk weekly called the
Round Table has printed a mass Of scurrilty diS
rect and Yicarious to this pnrport:
/. That Griffith ,Gaunt is an indecent publi-
cation.
2. That II is immoral,
8. That like OTHER nevelsts, the author deals
in adultery, bigarny and namel ess social crimes.
4, That, unlike the majority Of my prede-
cesaors, 4 side with the crimes depict.
q. That the modesty and purity OF women
cannot survive the perusal of g Griffith Gaunt.ii
6. That this story was declined by some Of the
lowest sensational weekly papers 6f New York
on the ground that they did not dare to undertake
disqualification.
4 u Passing from personal TO Yicarieus SANDER,
he prints the letter of an animal calling itself G.
~. H., who suggests that some inferior writer
wrote Griffith Gaunt, and that Ilent my name
to II for q foreign market, and so he and COM
bined to swindle the Boston publishers Thissin,
England we calf felony.
Now, sir, haze often known some obscure
Ounce who had disadvantage of eoncealing his
naneless name treat an esteemed author with
lofty contempt in the columns of a journal, and
call his masterpiece a sorry production. myself
am well accustomed to that Sort Of injustice and
iHaolenee from seribblers who could not write my
smallest chapter, to save their careasses from the
gailows, and their souls from premature daInna-
ton. But the spite and vanity of our interiors in
the great profound, and difficult art of writing is
generally satisfied by calling us dunees, and bur