but since experience had taught me that this was not true, my conviction that what was forbidden must necessarily be pleasant, sent me directly to my favorite retreat in the barn loft to experiment.  Since, however, I failed, in spite of persistent effort, to produce any such pleasant results as I had expected, I soon gave up my attempts for other kinds of amusement.

A few months after this, in midsummer, a very sensual servant girl began a series of attempts to satisfy herself sexually with my help.  She came nearly every day into the loft where I was playing and did her best to initiate me into the mysteries of sexual relationships, but I proved a sorry pupil.  She would rub my penis until it became erect and then, placing me upon her, would insert the penis in her vulva and make movements of her thighs and hips calculated to cause friction.  At times she varied the program by lying upon me and embracing me passionately.  I can remember distinctly her quick, gasping breath and convulsive movements.  She generally ended the seance by persuading me to perform cunnilingus upon her.  None of these performances were intelligible to me and I invariably protested against being compelled to leave my play to amuse her.  Even her fondling of my genitals annoyed me; and, stranger still, I preferred satisfying her by cunnilingus to the attempts at coitus.

It was nearly a year later that I experienced the first unmistakable manifestations of the sexual impulse—­erections accompanied by lustful feeling and vague desires of whose proper satisfaction I had no notion whatever.  It never occurred to me to associate my experiences with the servant girl with these new sensations.  The peculiar fact about them was that they were generally occasioned by the infliction of pain upon animals.  I do not remember how I first discovered that they could be evoked in this way, but I can clearly recollect many of my efforts to arouse this pleasurable excitement by abusing the dog or the cats, or by prodding the calves with a nail set in the end of a broom handle.  I seldom manipulated my genitals at this time, and when I did it was for the purpose of causing sexual excitement rather than allaying it.

During this same year I got my first idea of sexual intercourse by watching animals copulate; but my powers of observation must have been limited, for I supposed that the penis of the male entered the anus of the female.  In watching the coitus of animals I experienced lively sexual excitement and lustful sensations, located not only in the genitals, but apparently in the anus as well.  I often excited, myself by imagining myself playing the part of the female animal—­a peculiar combination of passive pederasty and bestiality.  A servant girl put me to right on the error of observation just mentioned, but neglected to apply the principle to human animals, and I remained for another year in complete ignorance