with her genitals exposed, and I followed her example.  The negro girl and my little friend both urinated on a tent floor at my request.  I did not fancy the odor of a girl’s genitals, nor the appearance of the vulva when the labia were held apart.

The following summer, when I was almost 11, I took a long walk one day with my old friend, the girl E. We entered a patch of woods and ate our lunch, but no sense of sexual drawing toward the girl came over me and she did not offer to entice me.  I slept with her boy-cousin one night, and her neuropathic aunt, a retired lady physician, bothered us by repeatedly creeping into our room.  I felt intuitively that she was watching to see whether we would commit mutual masturbation—­which we had no thought of doing.  Three years before I had opened the door of her bedroom suddenly and saw E.’s naked form.  The physician had been examining her, E. told me later.  My guardian also annoyed me by repeated warnings not to play with myself.

Just before I turned 11 I was sent to a small and so-called “home” boarding-school.  Eight of us lived in the smaller dormitory.  The matron roomed downstairs.  There was no resident master—­a serious error.  We small boys were told to strip one evening.  We were then tied neck-to-neck and made to dance a “slave-dance,” which was marked by no sexuality.  A boy of 15, R., one afternoon gave me the astonishing information that my father had taken a part in my procreation.  Up to this moment I had known only of the maternal offices, information of which had been beautifully supplied to me by my guardian when I was 7 years old.  At that time I talked freely about the coming of a baby brother in a distant city; I watched the construction of baby clothes; I named the newcomer, and I was momentarily disappointed when he proved to be a girl.  This same R., a strong boy with a large penis, got into the custom of lying in bed with me just before lights were put out.  He would read to himself and occasionally pause to pump his penis and make with his lips the sound of a laboring locomotive.  I felt impelled to handle his organ, for I was fascinated by its size, and stiffness, and warmth.  Rarely he would titillate my then small and unerect penis.  R. never ejaculated when he was with me; hence not until my third year was I acquainted with the appearance of a flow of semen.  Sometimes R. would stop during his dressing to manipulate his penis, but was such a picture of rosy health that I doubt whether he brought himself often to ejaculation.  R. told me that he had been to a brothel where his genitals were examined to determine whether they were large enough and not diseased.  He also related how he “played cow” with a girl of his own age, she consenting to perform fellatio upon him.  A dark-skinned, unwashed, pimpled but fairly vigorous boy of 16, with an irritable domineering manner, told me the delights of coitus with a girl in a bath-house, and I overheard his conversation