all,
and was left with a few hundred pounds. I pass now over a short time of
which there is nothing to be said, but that I was economical in all but
women.

My remaining guardian and my mother had been always at me with advice,
which I entirely disregarded, and flung away money in all directions.
Had I only spent it on women it would have lasted years longer. That
which women had I do not regret, they have been the greatest joy of my
life, and are so to every true man, from infancy to old age. Copulation
is the highest pleasure, both to the body and mind, and is worth all
other human pleasures put together. A woman sleeping or waking is a
paradise to a man, if he be happy with her, and he cannot spend his
money on anything better, or so good.

Soon after, almost dependent again on my mother, who did nothing but
upbraid me, my hopes centered in my old relative, who had promised to
make me his heir. He was not so gracious to me as he used to be; he
murmured at my extravagance, and supposed that any money I had would go
down the same sink, by which he meant women. He died suddenly, just as
he was in greatest wrath with me, and left me nothing.

All hopes were dashed to the ground. Laura was my consolation till she
left. For a year of my life I was needy and discontented, but not so
miserable as I was fated to be. I pass over that period, there was not
much in the amatory line to tell of. Fucking is a commonplace thing,
the prince and the beggar do it the same way, it is only the incidents
connected with it that are exciting. Voluptuous, reckless, youth and
beauty together, make the vulgar shoving, arse-wagging business poetical
for the time, but it is animalism.

Then I committed a more fatal error than spending a fortune in jollity;
what it was will be guessed, it is only referred to here to connect my
history. I was then in my twenty-sixth year.

I add a few observations which on reading this written many years ago,
seems now needful to explain even to myself.

Most of my relatives lived in the provinces, and were wealthy. We
visited each other periodically, but distance (there were few railways
then) prevented them from entering into my daily life, still less my
secret life. Fred's mother was nearest to us, and as the episodes
show, she and her family were most mixed up with my affairs. An aunt in
London, childless and rich, gave me most money, and afterwards left me
a good sum. I cared but little about those liv