That was my first _sexual_ experience--the proof that the _nexus_ was established between the genital mechanism and the complex of feeling we call sexual. "_Age 24_. At this age I went to stay at a house where there were two very pretty girls. I at once lost my heart to the elder, L.B., as she did to me (strong constitution, but refined nature; parents sound; brought up in the country; eleven months' breast-milk). 'What a mother she will make,' I said to myself. Now began a time of the spiritual and physical communion that I had pictured to myself.... "I am 60 now; she is 57. We are still like lovers. No; not _like_ lovers; we _are_ lovers. Of course, I do not mean to imply that sexual impressions have preponderated in our life, as they do in this account. Quite the contrary. We are both strong and, according to all accounts, unusually well preserved. We are very temperate. Since 48 I notice a gradual decline of the erotic propensity. It is now once in five or seven days. Since the menopause her propensity has declined markedly, but it is not extinct, and she delights as much as ever in my delight. She began to menstruate at 12, was regular till 17; then got chlorotic for a few months, soon recovered, though menstruation was often irregular, but never painful. Sexual experience began at 25. I have often wondered if a moderate self-gymnastic of the faculty, in Venturi's sense, would not have educated her genital sphere, and made her a still better comrade--excluded the periods of irregularity and frigidity. The stage of latency was too protracted. We often noticed that, when menstruation was due or nearly so, prolonged love-sports at bedtime would be followed by menstruation in the morning. We never were separated for longer than three months, and on that occasion, menstruation being delayed, she tried what masturbation would do to determine it, and with a positive result. My need, though less, is as imperative as ever. Seminal headaches--as I would call them--have ceased since 50; the accumulation only produces muddleheadedness. But I have not suffered accumulation over ten to at most twelve days. The quantity of semen is also less. The sensibility of the corpora has declined much; that of the glans is unimpaired. Erection is good. Orgasm takes two to four minutes to provoke, against forty to fifty seconds when young; it is in some respects even more enjoyable--perhaps less intense, but much more prolonged. I have no reaction from indulgence. But I never press it; it always presses me. For overaccumulation, with headache or muddleheadedness, the wifely hand is more efficacious than the vulva. Even the most vivid dream of coitus fails to compass the orgasm now. The peripheral stimulus is essential.