erections at night, etc.  These I repressed as best I could, by habitual masturbation and by the regular diet and exercise which academic life made possible.  At one time, for the period of a year I should say, I tried to overcome the desire for masturbation by gradual stages, on the principle of the drunkard’s cure by which he took every day less tipple by the insertion of one pebble more in his bottle.  I marked on my calendar the erotic dreams and the nights on which I masturbated, and sought gradually to extend the intervening periods.  Six weeks, however, was the longest time for which I was able to abstain.”

A few years later the writer of this communication formed an intimate relationship (in which he did not make the first advances) with a youth, some years younger than himself and of lower social class, whose development he was able to assist.  “But for my part,” he remarks, “I owe him as much as I gave him, for his love lighted up the gold of affection that was in me and consumed the dross.  It was from him that I first learned that there was no such thing as a hard-and-fast line between the physical and the spiritual in friendship.”  This relationship lasted for some years, when the young man married; its effects are described as very beneficial to both parties; all the sexual troubles vanished, together with the desire to masturbate.  “Everything in life began to sing with joy, and what little of real creative work I may have done I attribute largely to the power of work that was born in me during those years.”

HISTORY XIV.—­Scotchman, aged 38.  His paternal ancestors were normal, so far as he knows.  His mother belonged to a very eccentric old Celtic family.  Soon after 5 he became so enamored of a young shepherd that the boy had to be sent away.  He practised masturbation many years before the age of puberty, and attaches importance to this as a factor in the evolution of his homosexual life.

He has had erotic dreams rarely about men, about women more frequently.  While indifferent to women, he has no repulsion toward them.  He has had connection with women two or three times, but without experiencing the same passionate emotions as with men.

    He would like a son, but he has never been able to get up the
    necessary amount of passion to lead to marriage.

He has always had a sentimental and Platonic affection for men.  Of late years he has formed two friendships with adults of an affectionate and also erotic character.  He cares little for anything beyond mutual masturbation and kissing; what he desires is the love of the male.

In appearance there is nothing abnormal about him except an air of youth.  He is vigorous both in body and mind, and has enormous power of resisting fatigue.  He is an excellent man of business.  Is a patient student.  He sees no harm in his homosexual passions.  He is