did not remind me.  On the fifth day headache would otherwise appear and perhaps two acts be needful, or, if I forgot about it for a week, three acts running.  That I did not abuse the function the fact proves that every year I would forget about it two to three times and have to resort to this drastic mode.[230] But there is quite a different headache that follows on indulgence during convalescence or when the system is otherwise much lowered.  Railway traveling greatly accentuates the need with me; also riding.  Girls aroused no physical desire, though I chiefly sought their society, and even after the genital tension was so pronounced, up to 20, I was troubled by the fact that women did not affect me sexually.  About this time a buxom girl I liked and who liked me vehemently laid her hand on my arm, in trying to persuade me to give up shooting.  The phallus leaped simultaneously.  That was my first sexual experience—­the proof that the nexus was established between the genital mechanism and the complex of feeling we call sexual.

“Age 24.  At this age I went to stay at a house where there were two very pretty girls.  I at once lost my heart to the elder, L.B., as she did to me (strong constitution, but refined nature; parents sound; brought up in the country; eleven months’ breast-milk).  ‘What a mother she will make,’ I said to myself.  Now began a time of the spiritual and physical communion that I had pictured to myself....

“I am 60 now; she is 57.  We are still like lovers.  No; not like lovers; we are lovers.  Of course, I do not mean to imply that sexual impressions have preponderated in our life, as they do in this account.  Quite the contrary.  We are both strong and, according to all accounts, unusually well preserved.  We are very temperate.  Since 48 I notice a gradual decline of the erotic propensity.  It is now once in five or seven days.  Since the menopause her propensity has declined markedly, but it is not extinct, and she delights as much as ever in my delight.  She began to menstruate at 12, was regular till 17; then got chlorotic for a few months, soon recovered, though menstruation was often irregular, but never painful.  Sexual experience began at 25.  I have often wondered if a moderate self-gymnastic of the faculty, in Venturi’s sense, would not have educated her genital sphere, and made her a still better comrade—­excluded the periods of irregularity and frigidity.  The stage of latency was too protracted.  We often noticed that, when menstruation was due or nearly so, prolonged love-sports at bedtime would be followed by menstruation in the morning.  We never were separated for longer than three months, and on that occasion, menstruation being delayed, she tried what masturbation would do to determine it, and with a positive result.  My need, though less, is as imperative as ever.  Seminal headaches—­as I would call them—­have ceased since