One day he saw, for a moment, in a friend’s house, a dark, earnest-looking girl of 13, who made a very deep impression upon him, and, though he did not exchange a word with her, he often thought about her afterward.  Five years later he met the dark girl again, and the pair were mutually drawn to one another.  He proposed marriage and avowed a most desperate passion.  A refusal on the plea of youth caused him the deepest misery.  About eight years thereafter T. married the girl, and the marriage proved a very happy one for both.

When he was 15 T. made the acquaintance of a pretty blonde of the same age.  She was a high-spirited hoiden.  They were soon close friends and later lovers.  They wrote a number of letters to each other and exchanged locks of hair and presents.  Their talk about love was unreserved.  One day she told T. that she had been sexually embraced by a former lover, a boy of 16, hinting very plainly that she would like T. to embrace her.  This amour lasted for about six months.  The lovers had many opportunities for clandestine intercourse.  They used to consummate their passion in a part of a wood they called “the bower.”  Now and then one or the other would experience a pricking of conscience, but they were too passionately attached to each other to sever the intimacy.  At length the girl began to dread the risk of conception and the intercourse ceased.  Looking back upon this episode T. avers that the attachment and its physical expression seemed quite natural, poetic, and beautiful, though at times his religious principles condemned his conduct.  He now thinks that the experience is by no means to be regretted either by the girl or himself.  It was a wholesome youthful passion, as innocent as the mating of birds, and the insight which it gave to both of the hidden emotions of human nature was morally advantageous in after-life.

T. believes that his amative precocity was due to the early awakening of sex feeling by the servant-girl.  But he also believes that the love passion would have asserted itself early in any case, since he inherits a warm temperament, had erectile power long before puberty, and has considerable seminal capacity.  Having closely watched the effects of suppressed normal emotions and desires in youth at the time of pubescence, he maintains that such suppression is disastrous, causing unhealthy thoughts and leading to the formation of a habit of masturbation which may persist throughout life.  He believes that temporary sexual intimacies between boys and girls under 20 from the period of puberty would be far less harmful than separation of the sexes until marriage, with its resultants:  masturbation, hysteria, repressed and disordered functions in young women, seduction, prostitution, venereal affections, and many other evils.

HISTORY II.—­The following narrative was written by a married lady:  “My mother (herself a very passionate and attractive