As it was due to my tipsy obstinacy, I could not blame the girl, but resolved never to drink too much again, a resolve which I have kept, save once, unbroken.  In those days we youngsters thought that it was manly to be able to carry one’s liquor well, and did all in our power to attain to the seasoned head; but I considered that the risks entailed were too serious to be neglected.

I was well on in my 26th year when I met a widow with whom I fell in love, with the result that I married her.  She is a most sensible woman, and it was her intellectual gifts which were the attraction to me.  In my amours intellect has never played a part.  She has all along been cognizant of, and lenient to, my polygamous tendencies; for she recognizes the fact that whatever fredaine I may have on hand makes not the slightest difference in my love and respect for her.  Were she a more sensual woman, perhaps things would be different.

In all I have had to do with 81 other women, of whose special characteristics I kept a careful note at the time.  Twenty-six were normal women with whom my liasons have lasted long, so I know more about them than I do about the other fifty-five, who were prostitutes, and with some of whom my dealings were but for an afternoon.

The races represented have been these, for I have seen a bit of the world:  English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, French, German, Italian, Greek, Danish, Hungarian, Roumanian, Indian, and Japanese.  Taking them all round, the only difference that I found between old and young women is that the older ones are less selfish, and more complaisant, and less inclined to resent one’s being unable to attain to the height of their desire, for from time to time I have been unable to “come up to the scratch” after a heavy night’s labor, or when I was afraid of being caught in the act of coition, a fear which, in my experience, acts as a stimulus to desire in women, unlike its action in men.  Of all the women with whom I have had to do the nicest in every way have been the French women.  The English women of the town drink too much, and are far too keen on getting as much money as they can for as little as they can, to please me.  Were the London girls to recognize that men do not like a tipsy woman, and that where there is so much competition the person who is most skillful and most polite gets the most custom, the alien invasion in Regent street would soon come to an end.

Of the fifty-five prostitutes:  eighteen informed me that they were in the habit of masturbating; eight of their own free will, without asking for reward, did fellatio; six asked me to do cunnilingus, which I naturally declined to do; three proposed anal coitus.  Of those who did fellatio, two (one French and one German) told me that they had taken to it because they had heard that human semen was an excellent remedy against consumption, which disease had carried