"I must have been about 12 when I first was taught to masturbate by a cousin who was slightly older. At first I thought it silly, but I used to watch him at it, and practised it myself from time to time until I became old enough to experience the proper sensation. Then I have reason to think I gave myself up to it rather freely, but it was generally done in solitude, although it was long before I realized that there was anything wrong about it or that it might prove hurtful. Looking back now, I feel perfectly certain that my instincts were wholly homosexual from the very first. This cousin, who possessed notable intellectual and artistic gifts, married, but I feel sure his liking for his own sex was not normal. "With another cousin, almost years my junior, I was always on terms of the most affectionate intimacy. My holidays at his parents' house were my greatest delight. We were always together by night or day; we slept in the same bed, literally in each other's arms. To me it afforded the keenest sexual pleasure to press close to his naked body. We used mutually to handle and caress our parts, but without any attempt at mutual masturbation, although at that period I regularly practised it on myself. I asked him once about it, but he had not been taught it by others; and to my great pride and satisfaction I can say that I never either did it to him or asked him to do it to me. This I mention as an instance of my restraint in act, although my thoughts and desires knew no such curb. I remember also an elder brother of his, perhaps three or four years my senior, once showing me (then about 12, I suppose) his semierect penis. He would not allow me to touch it, but showed me how to draw back the foreskin so as to uncover the glans. His penis was large, and the incident was not forgotten. We had no other relation and I know that both he and my own friend grew up to be quite normal men. "I think I must have been about 17 when I got frightened about the occurrence of nocturnal emissions, which I believed were the evil result of masturbation, and for two or three years I continued in considerable mental distress until, when in my second or third year at college, I summoned up courage enough to consult our good old family doctor, who reassured me, but made, I now think, too light of my confidences, so that I relapsed the more readily, although much later on, into old habits.