all the more. And suddenly he received a note
asking him not to call any more, nor to try to communicate in any
other way. He did write, but his letters were returned unopened. And
soon after he read of her engagement to a prominent young banker. He
nearly went insane, and this is used not in any figurative sense. His
insomnia was _complete_, and resisted all treatment. When his pulse
became very rapid and his eyes acquired the wild look that they do
after many sleepless nights an attempt was made to administer
hypnotics, but they had practically no effect. Chloral, veronal, etc.,
only made him "dopy," irritable and depressed, but did not give him
one hour of sound sleep. His appetite was gone, now and then his limbs
would twitch, and he would sit and stare into space for hours at a
time. To study or attend the clinics was out of the question, and he
did not even attempt to take the final examinations. The parents felt
distressed, but were unable to do anything for him. The least attempt
at interference on their part, any attempt to console him, to induce
him to pull himself together, made him more irritable, more morose; so
that they finally left him alone. He was practically a total
abstainer, but one evening he went out and came home drunk; and after
that he drank frequently and heavily. His parents could do nothing
with him. One evening on Broadway he was accosted by a young
street-walker. She had a pleasant, sympathetic face, and he went with
her. _That was his first sex experience._ Up to that time he was
chaste. He met her again the following evening. Gradually a sort of
friendship grew up between them. She found out the cause of his grief,
and with maternal solicitude she tried everything in her power to
console him, and he began to look forward to the nightly meeting with
her. His grief became gradually less acute, he gave up drinking, which
he disliked, and which he had taken up only to deaden his pain; he
began to pull himself together, and in six or eight months he took
over his last year in Columbia and was properly graduated. He kept up
the friendship with the girl for over two years, when she died of
pneumonia. He did not love her, but he liked to be with her, as her
presence gave him physical and mental comfort. It is possible that she
loved him genuinely, but there was never any sentimental talk between
them, and there was never any question between them of the permanency
of the relationship. They both