with pleasure.  Indeed, it was an experience of this kind that made me return to masturbation after I had given it up for a while.  I remember one day seeing two lads of about 16 lying on the grass in the sunshine; all at once the bigger lad put out his hand and tried to open his companion’s trousers.  He resisted with all his might, and a long struggle ensued, ending in the smaller lad having his penis exposed and manipulated by the other.  Even at this day the recollection of this excites me.  Both lads grew up to be normal men.

“Twice only have I been approached by grown-up people.  When I was about 13 I used to meet often, when going to school by train, an old gentleman who courted me, as it were, used often to talk to me and asked me to come to see his well-known scientific collections, but I always had a vague distrust of him and never went.  One day in the summer during a spare hour I met him in an empty room in the museum, where there were usually very few visitors at that time of day, and where large show-cases gave concealment.  He came up to me and told me he had been away in the country, and that, when making his way home through hedges and thorny bushes, some of the thorns got stuck amongst his clothes and were still giving him uneasiness.  ‘I would be very grateful,’ he said, ’if you would put your hand down and try if you can feel any thorns sticking in my underflannels and pull them out.’  He then unbuttoned his braces on one side, undid his trousers and made me thrust my hand over his groin and lower abdomen.  I avoided touching his genitals, but he pushed my hand down in that direction until, burning with shame, I made my escape and ran off, not stopping until I was safe in school.  I scarcely understood it, but never spoke of it, and avoided him ever afterward.  I learned later on that he was a well-off bachelor who took a great interest in working lads and young men and did much to help them on in life and keep them, so it was said, from falling into bad company.  He died at a great age and left most of his fortune to an institution for lads, as well as large legacies to youths in whom he had been interested.

“The other time was on top of a tramcar when a grown-up man who was near pressed as close to me as he could, began to talk, praised my dark eyes, then put his hand on my thigh under my loose cloak and felt up toward my parts.  At the same time he took hold of my hand, caressed it and put it over his parts (it was in the dusk).  This excited me and, if we had not been at our destination, I think I would gladly have permitted further familiarities.  He tried to ask me where I lived, but there was no time to answer, and the female relative who was with me (on another seat) would no doubt have prevented this from having any further sequel.

“On more than one occasion I have experienced the sexual orgasm as the result of mental anxiety.  The first time this occurred was