rm in printing
it, I have done none to him, have indeed only carried out his evident
intention, and given to a few a secret history, which bears the impress
of truth on every page, a contribution to psychology.

PREFACE

I began these memoirs when about twenty-five years old, having from
youth kept a diary of some sort, which perhaps from habit made me think
of recording my inner and secret life.

When I began it, I had scarcely read a baudy book, none of which
excepting "Fanny Hill" appeared to me to be truthful, that did, and
it does so still; the others telling of recherche eroticisms, or
of inordinate copulative powers, of the strange twists, tricks, and
fancies, of matured voluptuousness, and philosophical lewedness, seemed
to my comparative ignorance, as baudy imaginings, or lying inventions,
not worthy of belief; although I now know by experience, that they may
be true enough, however eccentric, and improbable, they may appear to
the uninitiated.

Fanny Hill was a woman's experience. Written perhaps by a woman, where
was a man's, written with equal truth? That book has no baudy word
in it; but baudy acts need the baudy ejaculations; the erotic, full
flavored expressions, which even the chastest indulge in, when lust, or
love, is in its full tide of performance. So I determined to write my
private life freely as to fact, and in the spirit of the lustful acts
done by me, or witnessed; it is written therefore with absolute truth,
and without any regard whatever for what the world calls decency.
Decency and voluptuousness in its fullest acceptance, cannot exist
together, one would kill the other; the poetry of copulation I have only
experienced with a few women, which however neither prevented them, nor
me from calling a spade, a spade.

I began it for my amusement; when many years had been chronicled I tired
of it and ceased. Some ten years afterwards I met a woman, with whom,
or with those she helped me do; I did, said, saw, and heard, well nigh
everything a man and woman could do with their genitals, and began to
narrate those events, when quite fresh in my memory, a great variety of
incidents extending over four years or more. Then I lost sight of her,
and my amorous amusements for a while were simpler, but that part of my
history was complete.

After a little while, I set to work to describe the events of the
intervening years of my youth, and early middle age; which included most
of my gallant int