On the other hand, the tumescence of the parts in women is usually, (especially as girls are reared) not infrequently, a matter of considerable time, not infrequently several minutes, and now and then, of half-an-hour or more!  This is not always so, for in some very passionate women they are ready for action almost instantly.  Indeed, there are some women whose sex organs tumesce if they (the women) even touch a man—­any man—­and occasionally a case occurs where a woman will experience an orgasm if her clothing brushes against a man!  Such cases are, of course, abnormal.  But, for the most part, it is true that women are much slower in making ready for the sexual act than men are.

Again, as the organs become ready for the act, nature has provided a most wonderful means for bringing about their easy and happy union.  Both the male and female organs secrete and emit, or pour out, a sort of lubricating fluid which covers and sometimes almost floods the parts.  This is a clear and limpid substance, that looks much like the white of an egg, and is much like the saliva that is secreted in the mouth, only it is a thicker substance.  Chemically, it is almost identical with saliva.  That generated by the man is called “prostatic flow;” that produced by the woman “pre-coital secretion.”

Now, if time is given for this fluid to be secreted and exuded, all the parts become covered or saturated with it, and they are admirably equipped for easy union.  The glans penis is then covered with the slippery fluid, and the vulva and all the walls of the vagina are laved with the substance.  At the same time, the vaginal walls have widened and grown soft, and all the parts of the vulva (which are yet to be named and described in detail) are in like condition.  The result is that, though the penis be what might at first seem of such size as to make its entrance into the vagina impossible, as a matter of fact, such entrance is perfectly easy, when the parts are fully ready to be joined. But not before or otherwise!

So here is where the trouble comes.  If the husband is in haste, if he does not wait for the wife to become ready to meet him; if he forces his large, hard penis into the vagina before either is fully ready for such union—­when there is no prostatic fluid on its glans, and the vagina is shrunken and its walls are dry—­if coitus is engaged in in this way, it is perfectly easy to see that only disaster can result!  The woman is hurt, sometimes most cruelly, and the man in reality gets only a beastly gratification from the act. Of all bad things in all the world, such manner of coition is the worst!

And so, in this first part of the act, the one foremost thought to remember and observe is, take plenty of time!

There is another reason why, on the part of woman, this time should be extended, especially when she is a bride and inexperienced in these matters, and that is, that her “innocence,” and all her education, make her feel that she is doing wrong, or at least permitting a wrong thing to be done, and this holds back the proper growth of her passion, hinders the tumescence of her sex organs, delays the flow of the precoital secretion, and so keeps her from becoming properly prepared for her share of the mutual act.