were either sought after or flung aside, according to
the sexual or emotional instinct of each. No attempt was made at
discrimination. A kiss was as unclean as the act of _fellatio_,
and no one had any gauge or principle whatever on which to guide
the cravings of boyhood.

"My first initiation into the mysteries of sex was at the hands
of the dormitory servant, who showed me his penis when he woke me
in the mornings, and masturbated me when he gave me my hot bath
on a Saturday night. This old reprobate of 45 committed the act
of _fellatio_ with most of the boys in turn as he went the
dormitory rounds. For the older lads I cannot speak, but over us
younger ones of 14 and 15 he exercised a sort of unholy terror
and fascination. He was very popular; we came to him like doves
to a snake. When I revisited my old school many years later he
was occupying a very responsible position in the college chapel,
and I noticed that he wore that expression of sly reverence which
I think I can now instantly detect when I see it in a man.

"For the rest the dormitory was boisterous and lewd, and there
was a good deal of bullying, which probably did little harm. My
principal recollection now is of the filthy mystery of foul talk,
that I neither cared for nor understood. What I really needed,
like all the other boys, was a little timely help over the
sexual problems, but this we none of us got, and each had to work
out his own principle of conduct for himself. It was a long,
difficult, and wasteful process, and I cannot but believe that
many of us failed in the endeavor. We had come unprepared with
any advice. The principle upon which we were apparently trained
was the repression of every instinct. My mother was ignorant from
innocence, my father from indifference, and so between them I was
sent out helpless. A mother incurs great responsibility in
sending her child away unprepared. A parent should not seek to
shift his responsibility upon the schoolmaster. Love alone should
be the fount from which revelations should flow; the master, from
the very nature of his position, cannot reveal.

"An imminent breakdown in health--due, it would now appear, to
quite obvious causes--relieved me from the purgatory of the
college dormitory, and I was removed to one of the private
houses. These establishmen