ical sex
sensations was when I was about 16, and in sleep. But I did not
then recognize it, and seldom, indeed, gave the subject of sex a
thought. I was a child far beyond the age of childhood. The
accompanying dreams were disagreeable, but I cannot remember what
they were about. It was not until I was nearly 19 that I knew the
sexual orgasm in my waking state. It surprised me completely,
but I knew that I had known it before in my sleep.

"The knowledge came one summer when I was leading a rather
isolated life, and my mind was far from sex subjects, being deep
in books, Carlyle, Ruskin, Huxley, Darwin, Scott, etc. I noticed
that when I got up in the morning I felt very hot and
uncomfortable. The clitoris and the parts around were swollen and
erect, and often tender and painful. I had no idea what it was,
but found I was unable to pass my water for an hour or two. One
day, when I was straining a little to pass water, the full orgasm
occurred. The next time it happened, I tried to check it by
holding myself firmly, of course, with the opposite result. I do
not know that I found it highly pleasurable, but it was a very
great relief. I allowed myself a good many experiments, to come
to a conclusion in the matter, and I thought about it. I was much
too shy to speak to any one, and thought it was probably a sin. I
tried not to do it, and not to think about it, saying to myself
that surely I was lord of my body. But I found that the matter
was not entirely under my control. However unwilling or passive I
might be, there were times when the involuntary discomfort was
not in my keeping. My touching myself or not did not save me from
it. Because it sometimes gave me pleasure, I thought it might be
a form of self-indulgence, and did not do it until it could
scarcely be helped. Soon the orgasm began to occur fairly
frequently in my sleep, perhaps once or twice a week. I had no
erotic dreams, then or at any other time, but I had nights of
restless sleep, and woke as it occurred, dreaming that it was
happening, as, in fact, it was. At times I hardly awoke, but went
to sleep again in a moment. I continued for two or three years to
be sorely tried by day at frequent intervals. I acquired a
remarkable degree of control, so that, though one touch or
steadily directed thought would have caus