It certainly did not concern me.  What I have learned through my conversations on the subject with my pupils makes it evident to me that this is the common feeling of most boys of the adolescent period.  I think of two things which operated strongly to prevent my entering into sexual relations with girls during this period of my life.  One was an esthetic repugnance to the average prostitute.  These are the women most easily available to the youth whose sexual desires are developed.  I do not remember ever having seen an avowed prostitute who did not seem repulsive to me.  I confess to an inclination to priggishness.  I preferred to associate with people whom I called ‘nice people.’  It was fortunate for me that I was thrown into the society of a rather rough crowd of youths, who knocked a great deal of this snobbishness out of me.  But it did act to prevent my having recourse to prostitution.  A second preventive was my natural timidity in making advances to people.  This has been a trait that I have never completely overcome.  In my professional life this has been some detriment to my advancement.  In the matter of sex relationship it tended to prevent my taking advantage of association with and even of advances from girls who, not prostitutes, were nevertheless not virtuous.  There were a number of such in the town and neighborhood in which I lived, and I undoubtedly could have had sexual relations with them if I had only been able to overcome my shyness.  The desire was not wanting.  I really craved intercourse with them.  It was simply a matter of cowardice.  There was one girl whom I knew very well, with whom I was on friendly terms, who I knew had had sexual relations with other boys.  She showed, at times, a marked preference for me, and I am sure would have welcomed any advances that I should have made.  A number of times I sought her company with the intention of suggesting intercourse, but my resolution always failed.

“All through my college course I was much in the society of girls.  We were in class together, associated very freely in society, frequently studied together.  This is the most usual state of things in the western part of our country.  But they were simply comrades:  sex thoughts never arose in connection with such association.  And I am quite certain that this was the general attitude of the other boys.  Although the talk among the boy students was at times, very frankly and crudely, about sexual relations, no breath of scandal ever touched one of the college girls.  Again my experience as teacher and student brings a conclusion that coeducation of the sexes does not affect, in one way or the other, the strictly sexual life of the male student.  A very intimate friend who has had a varied experience in school work has told me recently that his conclusions are the same.

“When I was about 20 years old I became acquainted with a very beautiful girl, four years my junior.  Our acquaintance very rapidly