not then recognize it, and seldom, indeed, gave the subject of sex a thought.  I was a child far beyond the age of childhood.  The accompanying dreams were disagreeable, but I cannot remember what they were about.  It was not until I was nearly 19 that I knew the sexual orgasm in my waking state.  It surprised me completely, but I knew that I had known it before in my sleep.

“The knowledge came one summer when I was leading a rather isolated life, and my mind was far from sex subjects, being deep in books, Carlyle, Ruskin, Huxley, Darwin, Scott, etc.  I noticed that when I got up in the morning I felt very hot and uncomfortable.  The clitoris and the parts around were swollen and erect, and often tender and painful.  I had no idea what it was, but found I was unable to pass my water for an hour or two.  One day, when I was straining a little to pass water, the full orgasm occurred.  The next time it happened, I tried to check it by holding myself firmly, of course, with the opposite result.  I do not know that I found it highly pleasurable, but it was a very great relief.  I allowed myself a good many experiments, to come to a conclusion in the matter, and I thought about it.  I was much too shy to speak to any one, and thought it was probably a sin.  I tried not to do it, and not to think about it, saying to myself that surely I was lord of my body.  But I found that the matter was not entirely under my control.  However unwilling or passive I might be, there were times when the involuntary discomfort was not in my keeping.  My touching myself or not did not save me from it.  Because it sometimes gave me pleasure, I thought it might be a form of self-indulgence, and did not do it until it could scarcely be helped.  Soon the orgasm began to occur fairly frequently in my sleep, perhaps once or twice a week.  I had no erotic dreams, then or at any other time, but I had nights of restless sleep, and woke as it occurred, dreaming that it was happening, as, in fact, it was.  At times I hardly awoke, but went to sleep again in a moment.  I continued for two or three years to be sorely tried by day at frequent intervals.  I acquired a remarkable degree of control, so that, though one touch or steadily directed thought would have caused the orgasm, I could keep it off, and go to sleep without ‘wrong doing.’  Of course, when I fell asleep, my control ended.  All this gave me a good deal of physical worry, and kept my attention unwillingly fixed upon the matter.  I do not think my body was readily irritable, but I had unquestionably very strong sexual impulses.

“After a year or two, when I was working hard, I could not afford the attention the control cost me, or the prolonged mitigated sexual excitement it caused.  I took drugs for a time, but they lost effect, produced lassitude, and agreed with me badly.  I therefore put away my scruples and determined to try the effect of giving myself an instant and business-like relief.