FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57  
58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   >>   >|  
ith them. He, for this reason I am sure, made special friends with Schlegel, foreman of the collar department. I never saw a man derive a keener pleasure out of just standing and talking with women. Though, like most men, he enjoyed a smutty story, yet I never heard him say a really gross thing about any woman. And his language was always in good English, with few curses and oaths in it. * * * * * Our new place was a bit of heaven to me. I procured a copy of Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_, of Darwin's _Origin of Species_ and _Descent of Man_. Laboriously I delved through these last two books, my knowledge of elementary zoology helping me to the explication of their meaning. The theory of evolution came as a natural thing to me. It seemed that I knew it all, before,--as I did, because, in my own way, I had thought out the problem of the growth of the varying forms of animal life, exactly to the Darwinian conclusion. Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_ became my Bible. * * * * * It was at this time that I made the harrowing discovery that I had been working evil on myself ... through an advertisement of a quack in a daily paper. And now I became an anchorite battling to save myself from the newly discovered monstrosity of the flesh.... For several days I would be the victor, but the thing I hugged to my bosom would finally win. Then would follow a terror beyond comprehension, a horror of remorse and degradation that human nature seemed too frail to bear. I grew thinner still. I fell into a hacking cough. And, at the same time, I became more perverse in my affectation of innocence and purity--saying always to my father that I never could care for girls, and that what people married for was beyond my comprehension. Thus I threw his alarmed inquisitiveness off the track.... I procured books about sexual life. My most cherished volume was an old family medical book with charred covers, smelling of smoke and water, that I had dug out of the ruins of a neighbouring fire. In the book was a picture of a nude woman, entitled _The Female Form Divine_. I tore this from the body of the book and kept it under my pillow. I would draw it forth, press it against myself, speak soft words of affection to it, caress and kiss it, fix my mind on it as if it were a living presence. Often the grey light of dawn would put its ashen hand across my sunken cheeks before d
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57  
58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Whitman

 

procured

 

comprehension

 

Leaves

 

hacking

 

thinner

 

perverse

 

presence

 
living
 
father

affectation

 
innocence
 

purity

 

follow

 

terror

 
finally
 

victor

 
hugged
 

cheeks

 

sunken


nature

 
horror
 

remorse

 
degradation
 

neighbouring

 

smelling

 
Female
 

pillow

 

picture

 

entitled


affection
 

inquisitiveness

 
alarmed
 

people

 

married

 

sexual

 

medical

 

caress

 

charred

 

covers


family

 

cherished

 
volume
 
Divine
 

harrowing

 

language

 

English

 

smutty

 

curses

 

Darwin