afternoon musings of a bounder

there are things about being a cad some are good, some bad many over rated others underappreciated but being fought over in public by lovely women is a subject not sufficiently rendered, i'm sure in classic literature heroines of ancient romances were limited to demure glances and did not exert their tender muscles in interfeminine tussles as objects of manly competition they respected a tradition where the brave deserved the fair and carried her unresisting to his lair but in this new world of confusion metamorphosis and illusion with the old ways discarded and mocked and babes in arms immune to shock the fluttering eyelid is no more the maid steps boldly to the fore in darkest midnight or broadest day and seizes on her startled prey heedless of any scandaled glance and giving decency no chance astounds the assembled audience by insisting on her preference this modern maiden, in her glory rewriting the poet's ancient story "has pleasures of her own to give" who've never known them, have not lived