ance.
Medical advisers whom I consulted in that period assured me that
this was so; and, though at the time I often thought that they
were concealing the real facts from me out of kindness, my own
reading has since convinced me that they spoke nothing but
scientific truth.

"The years went on. I went through a university course, and in
spite of my poor health took a good degree. The agony of my
struggle for chastity seemed to come to a climax about four years
later when for a long period, partly owing to overstudy and
partly to the sexual strain, I fell into a condition of severe
nervous exhaustion, one of the most distressing symptoms of which
was insomnia. The dreaded cloud of insanity seemed to come
closer. I had to use alcohol freely at nights; and might by now
have become a drunkard, had I not been casually--or I must say,
Providentially--directed to the common sense plan of measuring my
whisky in a dram glass; so that the alcohol could not steal a
march upon me.

"This period was one of acute mental suffering. One cause of the
nervous tension was--as I have now no doubt--the need of healthy
sexual intercourse. I proved this eventually. My circumstances,
which had long been adverse to marriage, at length were shaped in
that direction. I renewed acquaintance with a lady whom I had
known well some years before; and our friendship ripened until,
after much perplexity on my side, owing to the uncertainty of my
health and prospects, I decided that it was right to speak. We
were married after a few months; and I realized that I had gained
an excellent wife. We did not come together sexually for some
nights after marriage; but, having once tasted the pleasure of
the marriage bed, I have to admit that, partly owing to ignorance
of the hygiene of marriage, I was for some time rather
unrestrained in conjugal relations, requiring intercourse as
often as eight or nine times a month. This was not unnatural when
one considers that I had now for the first time free access to a
woman, after a long and weary struggle to preserve chastity.
Married life, however, tends naturally--or did so in my case--to
regulate desire; and when I began to understand the ethics and
hygiene of sex, as I did a year or two after marriage, I was
enabled to exercise increasing self-restraint. We are no