The Stone of Chastity

THE author of The Nutmeg Tree and Harlequin House lights another pinwheel and lets the sparks fall where they will, and it’s great fun to watch. An antiquarian professor discovers a magic stone, once a steppingstone in a brook, which is reputedly an infallible test of chastity. No woman who is not chaste can — so the legend runs — step on it without slipping and falling into the water. The professor replaces it in its original position in the brook and then organizes a trial of virtue by having all the women in the village of Gillen ham walk across. The results the reader will want to discover for himselt. In his unflinching pursuit of science, the professor naturally comes into collision with nearly every prejudice, convention, and pretense known to man on the subject of sex; but he is quite as good a psychologist as antiquary and, by playing the women against one another and the men against the women, manages to carry out his little experiment very nicely. The fable is as light as the froth on the Gillenham beer, but as refreshing as the beer itself.