In some respects this manner of coitus, and this means of “going off together” is unsurpassed.

Which leads to the remark that this position is sometimes the best for the full completion of the act.  It is the easiest of all positions, the least fatiguing.  And if the wife is tired, or not quite “up to grade,” she can enjoy an embrace of this sort without fatigue, even to the full.  For the organs can be united in this position quite perfectly, though the penis will not penetrate the vagina to as great a length as in the other position.  Still, the climax can be perfectly reached in this way, and it is one of the best ways to make sure of perfect “timing,” of “spending” exactly together, which is greatly in its favor.

If there is a mis-matching of the organs, the vagina of the wife being too short for her husband’s penis, this is a most excellent way for meeting and overcoming that difficulty.

This naturally leads to another matter, as follows:—­It might seem to the reader that the different “strokings” of the vulva, with the fingers, or the penis, all the contact being outside the vagina, that all of these methods of excitation smack of masturbation, and so are of doubtful rightness.  In reply to which, note the following: 

The entire affair of coition, in humanity, has already been shown to be something wholly above and beyond mere animality.  It is the exercise of functions that belong only to mankind, and hence is not amenable to any merely animal laws or restrictions!  It is the source of numberless human joys, and any method of engaging in the act of mutual delight, that is, of mutually happifying, is legitimate and altogether right.  And so, if the parties choose to increase their mutual delight, if the husband wishes to arouse and intensify his wife’s passion by stroking her vulva with his saliva-moistened fingers, and she wishes him to do so, such act is as right and as wholesome as is coitus in the by-some-supposed-to-be only way of its exercise.  Let this never be doubted.

The fact is, this whole matter of sexual excitation by means of the hand, or in other ways than the union of the organs, has received a black eye at the hands of would be purists, which it in no way deserves.  As already noted, the word masturbation has been fastened to such acts, and then, any and every form of it has been condemned far beyond what the facts warrant, till the minds of the rank and file are wholly misled in the premises!  When one looks at the situation from the point of view which insists that all the sex functions should be under the control of the will, then light is thrown upon the entire subject.  Seen in this way, any form of sex stimulation, or auto-erotism even (auto-erotism means self sex-excitation) which is NOT CARRIED TO EXCESS, is right and wholesome!  But we have been taught the contrary of this for so long that it is difficult for us to realize that it is true. But it is!