--and acquired a taste for science.
When I could read I preferred biography, history, and poetry to
anything else.
When I was 13 years old and at a large school I heard for the
first time of coitus, but very imperfectly. For a few days it
filled my thoughts and mind, but feeling it was too engrossing a
subject and one which took me off better things, I put it out of
my mind. Later, another boy gave me a fuller description of the
matter, and I began to have a great desire to know more and to be
old enough to practice it. I also discovered that boys
masturbated, and about a year after tried the experiment for
myself. This vice was largely indulged in by my school-fellows.
It never occurred to me that it was sinful, until I was nearly
16, when I came across a passage in Kenns's _Manual of
Schoolboys_, in which it was hinted such things were wrong
morally and spiritually. Previously I had felt it was an
indelicate and shameful thing, and bad for health. This last idea
was held as a solemn fact by all my boy friends. Gradually
religion began to exert an influence over my sexual nature,
obtaining as years passed a greater and greater restraining
power.
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