of any other matters of sex to me or in my hearing, but
most of the girls were shy with me and I with them.

"In about two years' time the teachers got to like me and thought
me one of their nicest girls. I certainly influenced them and got
them to allow the girls more privileges.

"I lay great stress upon the physical privations and disgust that
I felt during these years. The mental starvation was not quite so
great because it was impossible for them to crush my mind as they
did my body. That it all materially aided to arrest the
development of my body I am certain.

"It is difficult to estimate sexual influences of which as a
child I was practically unaware. I certainly admired the
liveliest and cleverest girls and made friends with them and
disliked the common, lumpy, uneducated type that made two-thirds
of my companions. The lively girls liked me, and I made several
nice friends whom I have kept ever since. One girl of about 15
took a violent liking for me and figuratively speaking licked the
dust from my shoes. I would never take any notice of her. When I
was nearly 16 one of my teachers began to notice me and be very
kind to me. She was twenty years older than I was. She seemed to
pity my loneliness and took me out for walks and sketching, and
encouraged me to talk and think. It was the first time in my life
that anyone had ever sympathized with me or tried to understand
me and it was a most beautiful thing to me. I felt like an orphan
child who had suddenly acquired a mother, and through her I began
to feel less antagonistic to grown people and to feel the first
respect I had ever felt for what they said. She petted me into a
state of comparative docility and made the other teachers like
and trust me. My love for her was perfectly pure, and I thought
of her's as simply maternal. She never roused the least feeling
in me that I can think of as sexual. I liked her to touch me and
she sometimes held me in her arms or let me sit on her lap. At
bedtime she used to come and say good-night and kiss me upon the
mouth. I think now that what she did was injudicious to a degree,
and I wish I could believe it was as purely unselfish and kind as
it seemed to me then. After I had left school I wrote to her and
visited her during a few years. Once she wrote to me that if I
could g