65 files changed, 8610 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/77883-0.txt b/77883-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..39c048e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3277 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77883 ***
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
+
+Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
+
+Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been
+placed at the end of the paragraph.
+
+The new original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
+public domain.
+
+Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: (Original Cover)]
+
+
+
+
+                           IS SEX NECESSARY?
+
+[Illustration: “NEW YORK BECAME THE CAPITAL OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION.”]
+
+
+
+
+                            IS SEX NECESSARY?
+
+                                   OR
+
+                       WHY YOU FEEL THE WAY YOU DO
+
+
+
+
+                                   BY
+
+                      JAMES THURBER AND E. B. WHITE
+
+         [Illustration: (Sketch of woman seated on the floor)]
+
+                     _Harper & Brothers Publishers_
+
+                           NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+                                  1929
+
+
+
+
+                            IS SEX NECESSARY?
+
+
+                  COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
+
+                              FIRST EDITION
+
+                                  I-D
+
+    [Illustration: (Sketch of two guinea pigs touching nose to nose)]
+
+
+                           TO DAISY AND JEANIE
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: (Sketch of man kneeling, looking back over his shoulder)]
+
+CONTENTS
+
+        FOREWORD                                                      xi
+
+        PREFACE                                                     xvii
+
+     I  THE NATURE OF THE AMERICAN MALE: A STUDY OF PEDESTALISM        1
+
+    II  HOW TO TELL LOVE FROM PASSION                                 34
+
+   III  A DISCUSSION OF FEMININE TYPES                                55
+
+    IV  THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION: BEING A RATHER COMPLETE SURVEY OF
+        THE ENTIRE SEXUAL SCENE                                       73
+
+     V  THE LILIES-AND-BLUEBIRD DELUSION                              92
+
+    VI  WHAT SHOULD CHILDREN TELL PARENTS?                           112
+
+   VII  CLAUSTROPHOBIA, OR WHAT EVERY YOUNG WIFE SHOULD KNOW         133
+
+  VIII  FRIGIDITY IN MEN                                             160
+
+        ANSWERS TO HARD QUESTIONS                                    180
+
+        GLOSSARY                                                     189
+
+
+
+
+    “_Things look pretty bad right now_”
+
+          —MAJ. GEN. BRIGGS, AT SHILOH
+
+[Illustration: (Sketch of four men, with downcast posture, in a line.)]
+
+
+
+
+               Any reader who has
+               already begun to be
+               confused by the drawings
+               in this book should turn
+               to Page 195, where they
+               are explained.
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+During the past year, two factors in our civilization have been greatly
+overemphasized. One is aviation, the other is sex. Looked at calmly,
+neither diversion is entitled to the space it has been accorded. Each
+has been deliberately promoted.
+
+In the case of aviation, persons interested in the sport saw that the
+problem was to simplify it and make it seem safer. They introduced
+stabilizers and emergency landing fields. Even so, the plain fact
+remained that very few people were fitted for flying.
+
+With sex, the opposite was true. Everybody was fitted for it, but
+there was a lack of general interest. The problem in this case was to
+make sex seem more complex and dangerous. This task was taken up by
+sociologists, analysts, gynecologists, psychologists, and authors; they
+approached it with a good deal of scientific knowledge and an immense
+zeal. They joined forces and made the whole matter of sex complicated
+beyond the wildest dreams of our fathers. The country became flooded
+with books. Sex, which had hitherto been a physical expression,
+became largely mental. The whole order of things changed. To prepare
+for marriage, young girls no longer assembled a hope chest—they read
+books on abnormal psychology. If they finally did marry, they found
+themselves with a large number of sex books on hand, but almost no
+pretty underwear. Most of them, luckily, never married at all—just
+continued to read.
+
+It was because we observed how things were going with marriage and
+love that we set out, ourselves, to prepare a sex book of a different
+kind. In this venture we were greatly encouraged by our many friends of
+both sexes, most of whom never thought we could do it. Our method was
+the opposite of that used by other writers on sex: we saw clearly in
+what respect they failed, and we profited by their example. We saw,
+chiefly, that these writers expended their entire emotional energy in
+their writing and never had time for anything else. The great length of
+their books (some of them ran into two volumes and came in a cardboard
+box) testified to their absorption with the sheer business of writing.
+_They clearly hadn’t been out much._ They had been home writing; and
+meanwhile what was sex doing? Not standing still, you can better
+believe. So we determined that our procedure would be to approach sex
+bravely, and frequently. “Approach the subject in a lively spirit,” we
+told ourselves, “and the writing will take care of itself.” (It is only
+fair to say that the writing _didn’t_ take care of itself; the writing
+was a lot of work and gave us the usual pain in the neck while we were
+doing it.)
+
+At any rate we gathered about us a host of congenial people of all
+types, mostly girls. Gay, somber, petulant, all kinds. We also got
+a lot of dogs, mostly Scotch terriers, a breed noted for stoicism,
+bravery, and humor. Thus equipped, we set about the work with a good
+spirit, and by dint of a rather unusual energy were able to prepare the
+book for publication and see it through the press without giving up
+any social engagements or isolating ourselves from the sexual world.
+Furthermore, all the time we were writing the book, we continued to
+earn our living—in itself no easy matter.
+
+We early resolved to keep alive our curiosity about things. Wherever
+we went we asked questions. Aware of the tangled sexual thread
+running through the pattern of people’s lives, we continually asked
+the question: “Why is it that _you_ never got straightened out?” The
+answers we got to this question helped us immeasurably.
+
+Although most of our research was in life’s laboratory, so to speak, we
+wish also to express our indebtedness to those authors whose writings
+on the subject inspired us. How can we forget, in this connection, such
+men as Will Durant, Samuel D. Schmalhausen, Dr. Joseph Collins, Joseph
+Wood Krutch, and Gardner Murphy?
+
+Most particularly are we desirous of acknowledging a debt to those two
+remarkable men, who, more than any others, gave us the courage to go
+on; two men without whose example we never could have found in sex a
+daily inspiration; those two geniuses whom it is our pleasure to call
+the “deans of American sex,”—Walter Tithridge and Karl Zaner.
+
+[Illustration: (Sketch of man seated on bench, with downcast head)]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Men and women have always sought, by one means and another, to be
+together rather than apart. At first they were together by the simple
+expedient of being unicellular, and there was no conflict. Later the
+cell separated, or began living apart, for reasons which are not clear
+even today, although there is considerable talk. Almost immediately the
+two halves of the original cell began experiencing a desire to unite
+again—usually with a half of some other cell. This urge has survived
+down to our time. Its commonest manifestations are marriage, divorce,
+neuroses, and, a little less frequently, gun-fire.
+
+When society decided it would have to set up laws to govern these
+polymorphous manifestations of a once simple urge which had got out
+of hand, it did so without a very clear notion of sex as we know it
+today. It did not realize that direction of the Love Urge by outside
+forces of law and order must be subversive of the complete flowering
+of the individual—and is there anything in life more wonderful than a
+completely flowered individual, man or woman?
+
+Yet under all the weight of social regulation, the ancient desire to
+unite and to separate and to unite again, usually with some one else,
+has survived, for the simple reason that it is stronger than man-made
+law and because cells, as now constituted, are more astute than the
+police. They have to be. Thus we find men and women being consistently
+together even against the rigorous dictates of a prescribed behaviorism
+to whose institutional coldness the warmth of their emotional natures
+is irrevocably opposed. And so on.
+
+As far as I can make out, the authors of this remarkable book subscribe
+to the modern ideal of freedom in sex, but do not believe that marriage
+has yet been proved a failure in every case, nor that sex can
+profitably be examined entirely apart from that old institution. In
+this viewpoint the authors and myself are at one, which is probably the
+reason I was asked to write an introduction.
+
+Marriage, as an instrument, is a well-nigh perfect thing. The trouble
+is that it cannot be successfully applied to the present-day emotional
+relationships of men and women. It could much more easily be applied
+to something else, possibly professional tennis. As they now stand,
+marriage and sex militate against each other. If marriage is to be
+retained it must be perfected to meet the new demands and intricacies
+of sex. There is, doubtless, a discoverable plane on which marriage and
+sex, the institutional and the emotional, could meet and, as who should
+say, become friends. Not only marriage, however, but sex as well, would
+have to make certain concessions. Tempered by this balanced viewpoint,
+one must find it, then, logically impossible to pose only the question,
+“What is wrong with marriage?” It becomes necessary also to pose the
+question, “What is wrong with sex?” For if it is plausible to assume
+that something may be so radically wrong with a well-nigh perfect
+institutional device that it might be well for society to abandon it,
+one must, in all fairness, entertain the suspicion that something may
+be so wrong with a well-nigh perfect emotional relationship that it
+might be well for society to abandon it, too.
+
+[Illustration: _Early Woman._]
+
+People never have been satisfied with marriage. If the contracting
+parties are satisfied with it, some one else isn’t. How often one hears
+the expression, “I don’t know what she sees in him.” As a matter of
+fact, however, we hear that expression less frequently today than we
+used to, because psychology has enabled us to know what she does see in
+him. There is, however, still considerable doubt as to what he sees in
+her. Some authorities claim that no man can see all there is to see in
+a woman, because she is too complicated and mysterious for him. This
+notion—that Woman is more incomprehensible than Man—has persisted for
+centuries. It is of a piece with the legend that Woman is deserving
+of a certain form of idolatrous worship, a legend that grew up in the
+early ages of the world. When Man first came into being, he did not
+think that the female was extraordinary. He did not think that anything
+was extraordinary. The world was unattractive physically, and a little
+dull. There was no vegetation, and without vegetation there can be no
+fancy. Then trees came into existence. It was trees that first made
+Man begin to brood. In pondering their leafy intricacies he got his
+first crude concept of beauty. He used to tear great branches out of
+trees and take them home to his cave woman. “Here,” he would say to
+her, “lie on these.” The man then reclined in a corner of the cave and
+watched the woman’s hair mingle with the leaves, and her eyes shine
+through them, until he fell asleep. His dreams were troubled. Woman
+came into his dreams as a tree, then a tree came into his dreams as a
+woman. He also got her eyes, shining through the leaves, all mixed up
+with the moon. Out of this curious and lamentable confusion grew the
+tendency in Man’s mind to identify Woman with the phenomena of the
+burgeoning earth and the mysteries of the illimitable heavens. As time
+went on Man rather enjoyed cultivating this idea. It was something
+to think about. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Thus was the
+subconscious born, with all its strange mixture of fact and symbol.
+
+As the vegetation of the earth grew more luxuriant Man grew more moody.
+Each new plant represented something that he could not easily fit into
+his practicable scheme of things (the tomato, for example, wasn’t
+fitted in until late in the nineteenth century). For the first wild
+iris, Man saw no conceivable use. However, he plucked it. It had, he
+noticed, that curious color, or pigmentation, which he associated with
+only two other things—the sky and Woman’s eyes. He brooded upon this
+astounding coincidence overlong. Often he got wet through, standing in
+a bog, contemplating a blue flag. Then he would take it home and give
+it to his mate.
+
+[Illustration: _Early Conference._]
+
+All these things operated to bring about in Man’s mind an inclination
+to identify the wonders of the earth and sky with the physical fact
+of his mate’s existence. He decided they must have a great deal in
+common, these wonders and this woman. What that was he determined to
+find out. Too proud at first, too male, to take his mate into his
+confidence in the matter of his uncertainties, he got to tramping
+the bogs and woods at night, seeking the answer. He bayed questions
+at the moon, he beseeched the trees to speak, he shouted at the wild
+iris. There was no answer. It was then that it occurred to Man that,
+since these things could not tell him the answer to the riddle of the
+universe, the only possible source of that information must repose in
+the living creature which he identified with them, the woman with skyey
+eyes and leafy hair. Then came that important night when one of the
+early men resolutely rose from his knees, under the moon, and started
+back to his cave to demand from his mate an explanation of all these
+mysteries. On the way a star fell. Those ages were notable for falling
+meteors. This one frightened the man as it crashed sizzling through the
+trees and buried itself with a moan in the ground. He ran the rest of
+the way home, arriving breathless and white.
+
+“Wha’ was ’at?” he croaked, pointing behind him. His mate saw nothing
+but the waving of fern fronds in the wind, the form of some animal
+slinking into the woods.
+
+“It is nothing,” she said, and smiled, and ran her hand through his
+hair.
+
+Right then and there Man conceived the notion that Woman was so closely
+associated, so inextricably entwined with the wonders and terrors of
+the world, that she had no fear of them. She was in quiet league with
+the forces of life. She was an integral part of the stars and the moon,
+she was one with the trees and the iris in the bog. He fell down on his
+knees, the pitiable idiot, and grasped her about the waist.
+
+It is inconceivable that a myth as strong as this belief in the
+ineffability of Woman, as deeply rooted in the soils of time, can
+ever be completely eradicated. However fantastical, however untrue,
+crotchet or whim, fancy or foible, there it is and there it has always
+been. To destroy it would be to put the female properly in her place,
+as a plain, unadorned unit in the senseless but unending pattern of
+biological continuity. Romantic love would disappear. Life would be
+simplified. Neuroses would vanish. But Man clings to his ancient and
+silly value. What it has done to him is quite easy to see. It has
+subordinated him to Woman, for one thing. The emotional nature of the
+male has either been overlooked altogether or greatly disparaged.
+“Isn’t that just like a man?” is an all-too-glib and common expression.
+It implies that one can virtually ascribe to all men the simple
+reactions which, in a number of men, inexpertly observed, have proved
+_likely_ to take place. (The italic is mine.)
+
+Observers have been too prone to hold that the male is negligible, and
+to overemphasize the importance of the female. Thus we find such keen
+analysts as Ira S. Wile and Mary Day Winn[1] asserting that “anyone
+who wishes to understand modern marriage must center his attention on
+woman and find out what she thinks of it and what she intends to do
+about it.” This is the old Bridegroom Fallacy—the notion, to paraphrase
+Miss Loos, that the bride is divine but that the bridegroom is just
+nothing. Unless more stress is laid, and pretty quickly, too, upon the
+complexity of the male, and the importance of what he is thinking about
+and what he intends to do, or at least what he would like to do, we are
+never going to arrive at a norm. How often do you hear it said that the
+little whims and desires of a man should be cherished, or even listened
+to? You don’t hear it said at all. What you do hear is that “the way to
+a man’s heart is through his stomach.” A thing like that hardens a man.
+He may eat his spinach and say nothing, but he is being hardened just
+the same.
+
+[1] _Marriage in the Modern Manner._
+
+The American male, because of the remarkable stress laid upon women in
+this country, has been understood least of all males. There has been
+no completely successful attempt to state his case until the authors
+of this extraordinary book came along. I do not know who they are. In
+places they do not seem to be themselves. But they’ve got something. (A
+lot of what they have they seem to have got from Zaner and Tithridge,
+which is all right with me.) At any rate, they state the case for the
+American man clearly and plausibly. At the same time they have by no
+means neglected the female. It takes two to make a neurosis, and nobody
+knows that any better than White and Thurber, unless it’s Zaner and
+Tithridge.
+
+Herein are examined, therefore, both men and women, male and female,
+Man and Woman—not only in themselves, but in their curious reactions
+to each other. The term “reaction” seems to be used in this book to
+include not only those quick, unpremeditated reflexes which cause so
+much trouble, but also those slowly formulated prejudices, doubts, and
+suspicions which cause even more trouble. If this book does anything
+at all toward straightening out the lamentable mess that things have
+got into in America—and I certainly think it will—the authors will feel
+amply repaid for their pains, which consisted in large part, they tell
+me, of insults.
+
+  LT. COL. H. R. L. LE BOUTELLIER, C.I.E.
+
+  SCHLAUGENSCHLOSS HAUS,
+  KING’S BYWAY,
+  BOISSY-LE-DOUX SUR SEINE.
+  _July 15, 1929_
+
+
+
+
+                            IS SEX NECESSARY?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE NATURE OF THE AMERICAN MALE: A STUDY OF PEDESTALISM
+
+
+In no other civilized nation are the biological aspects of love so
+distorted and transcended by emphasis upon its sacredness as they
+are in the United States of America. In China it’s all biology. In
+France it’s a mixture of biology and humor. In America it’s half, or
+two-thirds, _psyche_. The Frenchman’s idea, by and large, is to get the
+woman interested in him as a male. The American idea is to point out,
+first of all, the great and beautiful part which the stars, and the
+infinite generally, play in Man’s relationship to women. The French,
+Dutch, Brazilians, Danes, etc., can proceed in their amours on a basis
+entirely divorced from the _psyche_. The Chinese give it no thought at
+all, and never have given it any thought. The American would be lost
+without the _psyche_, lost and a little scared.
+
+As a result of all this there is more confusion about love in America
+than in all the other countries put together. As soon as one gets
+the psychical mixed up with the physical—a thing which is likely to
+happen quite easily in a composing-room, but which should not happen
+anywhere else at all—one is almost certain to get appetite mixed up
+with worship. This is a whole lot like trying to play golf with a
+basketball, and is bound to lead to maladjustments.
+
+The phenomenon of the American male’s worship of the female, which is
+not so pronounced now as it was, but is still pretty pronounced, is
+of fairly recent origin. It developed, in fact, or reached its apex,
+anyway, in the early years of the present century. There was nothing
+like it in the preceding century. Throughout the nineteenth century
+the American man’s amatory instincts had been essentially economic.
+Marriage was basically a patriotic concern, the idea being to have
+children for the sake of the commonwealth. This was bad enough, but
+nevertheless it is far less dangerous to get the commonwealth mixed up
+with love than to get the infinite mixed up with love.
+
+There was not a single case of nervous breakdown, or neurosis, arising
+from amatory troubles, in the whole cycle from 1800 to 1900, barring
+a slight flare-up just before the Mexican and Civil wars. This was
+because love and marriage and children stood for progress, and progress
+is—or was—a calm, routine business. “Mrs. Hopkins,” a man would
+say to the lady of his choice (she was a widow in this case)—“Mrs.
+Hopkins, I am thinking, now that George[2] has been dead a year,
+you and I should get married and have offspring. They are about to
+build the Union Pacific, you know, and they will need men.” Because
+parents can’t always have men-children when they want them, this led
+to almost as many women as men working on the Union Pacific, which in
+turn led to the greater stature of women in the present Northwest
+than in any other part of the nation. But that is somewhat beside the
+point. The point is that men and women, husbands and wives, suitors
+and sweethearts, in the last century lived without much sentiment and
+without any psycho-physical confusion at all. They missed a certain
+amount of fun, but they avoided an even greater amount of pother (see
+Glossary). They did not worry each other with emotional didoes. There
+was no hint of a Pleasure-Principle. Everything was empiric, almost
+somatic.[3]
+
+[2] The late George Hopkins.
+
+[3] The word “somatic” has been left out of the glossary because of the
+confusion which the dictionary itself seems to be in over the meaning
+of the term. “Pertaining to the wall of the body” is as close as the
+New International comes to what we have in mind here, but it goes right
+on to use “parietal” as a synonym and parietal means “pertaining to
+order within the buildings of a college.” Then again the word goes back
+to the old Indian, or East Indian, root _Soma_ which means a god, a
+liquor, and an asclepiadaceous climbing shrub (_Sarcostemma acidum_).
+Furthermore, if your eyes stray even a fraction of an inch, in looking
+up “somatic,” you are in “sölvsbergite” which includes the feldspars,
+ægirite, grorudite, and tinguaite.
+
+This direct evasion of the Love Urge on the part of Americans of the
+last century was the nuclear complex of the psycho-neurosis as we know
+it today, and the basis for that remarkable reaction against patriotic
+sex which was to follow so soon after the Spanish-American war.
+
+[Illustration: _Fig. 1._
+
+_Sex Substitutes (Übertragung Period): Baseball._]
+
+At the turn of the century, the nation was on a sound economic basis
+and men had the opportunity to direct their attention away from the
+mechanics of life to the pleasures of living. No race can leap lightly,
+however, from an economic value to an emotional value. There must be
+a long period of _Übertragung_, long and tedious. Men were not aware
+of this, thirty years ago, because the science of psychology was not
+far advanced, but nature came to their aid by supplying a temporary
+substitute for an emotional sex life, to tide them over during the
+period of _Übertragung_. This substitute took the form of games.
+Baseball assumed a new and enormous importance; prize-fighting reached
+its heyday; horse-racing became an absorption, bicycling a craze.
+
+Now women, naturally intraverts, could not easily identify themselves
+with baseball or prize-fighting (they admired Christy Mathewson and
+Terry McGovern, but that was about all); they took but slowly to
+horse-racing; and they giggled and acted the fool when they first tried
+to balance themselves on a bicycle. They drew away from men and from
+men’s concerns, therefore—there was no more of the old Union Pacific
+camaraderie—and began to surround the mere fact of their biological
+destiny with a nimbus of ineffability. It got so that in speaking of
+birth and other natural phenomena, women seemed often to be discussing
+something else, such as the Sistine Madonna or the aurora borealis.
+They became mysterious to themselves and to men; they became suddenly,
+in their own eyes, as capable of miracle and as worthy of worship
+as Juno and her sisters. This could not go on. The conflict was
+ineluctable.
+
+[Illustration: _Fig. 2._
+
+_Sex Substitutes (Übertragung Period): Bowling._]
+
+When men, wearied of games, turned to women with that urgency so
+notable in the American male for its simplicity and directness, they
+found them unprepared for acceptance and surrender. The process of
+adjustment in courtship and in marriage became more involved than it
+had ever been before in the history of the country, if not in the
+history of the world. The new outdoors type of American man, with
+all his strength and impetuosity, was not easily to be put off. But
+the female, equipped with a Defense far superior in polymorphous
+ingenuities to the rather simple Attack of the male, was prepared. She
+developed and perfected the Diversion Subterfuge. Its purpose was to
+put Man in his place. Its first manifestation was fudge-making.
+
+[Illustration: _FUDGE-MAKING_.
+
+“_The female, equipped with a Defense far superior in polymorphous
+ingenuities to the rather simple Attack of the male, developed, and
+perfected, the Diversion Subterfuge. The first manifestation of this
+remarkable phenomenon was fudge-making._”]
+
+The effectiveness of fudge-making in fending off the male and
+impressing him with the female’s divine unapproachability cannot be
+overestimated. Neither can its potentiality as a nuclear complex. The
+flitting from table to stove, the constant necessity of stirring the
+boiling confection, the running out-of-doors to see if the candy had
+cooled and hardened, served to abort any objective demonstrations at
+all on the part of the male. He met this situation with a strong
+Masculine Protest. He began to bring a box of candy with him when he
+called, so that there would not be any more fudge-making. These years
+constituted the great Lowney’s era in this country. Brought back to
+where she had started, face to face with the male’s simple desire to
+sit down and hold her, the female, still intent upon avoidance of the
+tactual, retaliated by suggesting Indoor Pastimes—one of the greatest
+of all Delay Mechanisms. All manner of parlor games came into being
+at this period, notably charades,[4] which called for the presence of
+other persons in the room (Numerical Protection). The American male’s
+repugnance to charades, which is equaled, perhaps, by his repugnance to
+nothing else at all, goes back to those years. The Masculine Protest,
+in this case, was a counter-suggestion of some games of his own, in
+which there was a greater possibility of personal contact. His first
+suggestions were quite primitive, such as that it would be fun to
+count up to a hundred by kissing. The female’s response was the famous
+one of Osculatory Justification. There must be, she decreed, more
+elaborate reasons for kissing than a mere exhibition of purposeless
+arithmetical virtuosity. Thus Post Office and Pillow were finally
+devised, as a sort of compromise. Neither was satisfactory to either
+sex. The situation became considerably strained and relationships
+finally trailed off into the even less satisfactory expedient of
+going for long rides on a tandem bicycle, which has had its serious
+effects upon the nature of the American man. He liked, for one thing,
+to do tricks on a bicycle. The contraption was new to him, and he
+wanted to do tricks on it. One trick that he liked especially was
+riding backwards. But there wasn’t one woman in ten thousand, riding
+frontwards on the rear seat of a tandem wheel, who would permit her
+consort to ride backwards on the front seat. The result of all this was
+not adjustment, but irritability. Man became frustrated.
+
+[4] See Glossary, definition No. (1).
+
+[Illustration: “_There wasn’t one woman in ten thousand, riding
+frontwards on the rear seat of a tandem wheel, who would permit her
+consort to ride backwards on the front seat. The result of all this was
+not adjustment, but irritability. Man became frustrated._”]
+
+Frustration wrought its inevitable results. Men began to act
+jumpy and strange. They were getting nowhere at all with women. The
+female gradually assumed, in men’s eyes, as she had in her own, the
+proportions of an unattainable deity, something too precious to be
+touched. The seed of Pedestalism was sown. The male, in a sort of
+divine discontent, began to draw apart by himself. This produced that
+separation of the physical and the psychic which causes the adult to
+remain in a state of suspended love, as if he were holding a bowl of
+goldfish and had nowhere to put it. This condition nowadays would lead
+directly to a neurosis, but in those days men were unable to develop
+a neurosis because they didn’t know how. Men withdrew, therefore,
+quietly and morosely, to their “dens.” It was the epoch of the den in
+America. Some marvelous ones sprang into being. Their contents were
+curiously significant. Deprived of possessing the female, the male
+worked off his Possessive Complex by collecting all manner of bibelots
+and bric-à-brac. The average den contained a paper-weight from Lookout
+Mountain, a jagged shell from Chickamauga, a piece of wood from the
+_Maine_, pictures of baseball-players with beards, pictures of bicycle
+champions, a yellowing full-page photograph of Admiral Schley, a
+letter-opener from Niagara Falls, a lithograph of Bob Fitzsimmons, a
+musket-badge from the G. A. R. parade, a red tumbler from the state
+fair, a photograph of Julia Marlowe, a monk’s head match-holder, a
+Malay kriss, five pipe racks, a shark’s tooth, a starfish, a snapshot
+of the owner’s father’s bowling team, colored pictures of Natural
+Bridge and Balanced Rock, a leather table runner with an Indian chief
+on it, and the spangled jacket of a masquerade costume, softly shedding
+its sequins.
+
+[Illustration: _Fig. 3._
+
+_Sex Substitutes (Übertragung Period): Craps._]
+
+The den was the beginning of male sublimation in this country, but
+the fruits of that sublimation were slow in ripening. At the start,
+in fact, they were in a state of absolute suspension. Man began to
+preoccupy himself with anything, no matter how trivial, which might
+help him to “forget,” as the lay expression has it. He thought up
+childish diversions, at which one person can amuse himself, and to
+justify his absorption in these futile pastimes he exaggerated their
+importance, as we shall see. These diversions included the diabolo, the
+jig-saw puzzle, linked nails and linked keys, which men took apart and
+put back together again, and most important of all, pigs-in-clover.
+
+[Illustration: _Fig. 4._
+
+_Sex Substitutes (Übertragung Period): Six-day Bicycle Racing._]
+
+During this period almost no achievements of value, in art, science,
+or engineering, were forthcoming in the nation. Art, indeed,
+consisted chiefly of putting strange devices on boxes with the aid
+of a wood-burning set. The commonest device was the swastika, whose
+curiously distorted conformation bears no discernible relationship to
+any known phallic symbolism. Those years were blank, idle, lost years.
+Outside affairs of all kinds were neglected. Men retired to their dens
+and were not seen for days. The panic of 1907 was a direct result.
+It might be interesting to examine into a typical case history of the
+period.
+
+
+CASE HISTORY
+
+George Smith, aged 32, real estate operator. Unmarried, lived with
+mother. No precocious mother fixation. Had freed his libido without
+difficulty from familial objects, and was eager to marry. Had formed
+an attachment in 1899, at the age of 29, with a young virgin. Her
+Protective Reactions had been immediate and lasted over a period of
+three years, during which he had never even held her hand. Defense
+Devices: usually euchre (four-handed), or pedro. Definite and frequent
+fudge-making subterfuge. Post Office and Pillow, both with low degree
+of success.
+
+Smith’s separation between the physical and the psychic occurred in
+1902, the direct stimuli presenting themselves on June 6th of that
+year, examination (by Dr. Matthiessen) showed. On that day Smith ran,
+frightened, from a barber-shop in Indianapolis, where he lived. Inside
+the shop, on the floor, a middle-aged man named Herschel Queeper had
+thrown a fit. Queeper had been trying for two days to get three little
+balls, under a glass in a tiny round box, to roll into an opening made
+for them (common pigs-in-clover puzzle). But no sooner would he get the
+third one in than one, or perhaps both, of the others would roll out.
+Mrs. Queeper was beginning to wonder where he was.
+
+[Illustration: _UNCONSCIOUS DRAWING: PLATE I._
+
+_Unconscious drawings, as they are called in psychoanalytical
+terminology, are made by people when their minds are a blank. This
+drawing was made by Floyd Neumann, of South Norwalk. It represents the
+Male Ego being importuned by, but refusing to yield to, Connecticut
+Beautiful._]
+
+Smith withdrew to his den and pondered and fiddled around and made
+Unconscious Drawings (Cf. Plates I, II, III and IV). He turned his
+attention from the object of his amorous affections to a consideration
+of the problems of pigs-in-clover. The usual Justification of
+Occupation occurred. It took the form of exaggerating the importance of
+finding out whether the puzzle could possibly be solved, and of working
+out a methodology of solving it more readily, if it could be solved at
+all. The case procured one of the little boxes and began to roll the
+balls toward the opening. At first he set about it quite calmly.
+There were no immediate signs of mental deterioration, either malignant
+or benign. But although the case got all the balls into the opening,
+thus proving that it could be done, he never got them all in at the
+same time. In the second month he threw a brief fit. This, today, would
+ordinarily prove the first step toward a complete physico-psychic
+breakdown, but in those days neuroses were staved off longer, owing to
+the general ignorance of psychology, and Smith not only calmly examined
+the effect of the fit upon himself, without calling in any scientists,
+but determined to go on and examine the effects of fits upon others.
+He decided, however, that it would be difficult to examine the effects
+of puzzle-fits upon men, because men brooked no examination when they
+were intent upon puzzles, and so he hit on the idea of having his dog,
+an animal named Dewey, play with the little round box until it threw a
+fit. But when he called in his dog he found, after several experiments,
+that the dog could not hold the box in either its right or left
+paw.[5] Furthermore, the animal was profoundly incurious about the
+puzzle.[6]
+
+[5] This presented a difficulty that has not been overcome to this day.
+
+[6] This disinterest held good up until the day of the dog’s death.
+
+[Illustration: “_Furthermore, the animal was profoundly incurious about
+the puzzle._”]
+
+Undismayed, Smith decided that somewhere in Indianapolis there must be
+a dog adroit enough to handle the box and sagacious enough to grasp
+the idea behind it, and with a view to finding such an animal, he
+determined to get all the dogs in town, and all the pigs-in-clover
+puzzles in town, into one room and see what would happen. (Apotheosis
+Complex, with Plurality Fallacy.)
+
+Smith was able, however, to round up only about 85 per cent of the
+dogs of the city, because there were many who were too busy to get
+away at the time. Even so, 85 per cent of the dogs in Indianapolis
+was more than had ever been got together in one room before. The case
+attempted to explain the problem to the dogs in short, one-syllable
+talks, but the bedlam was too loud and too prolonged for him to make
+himself heard. Fifty or more St. Bernards and a few dozen Chesapeake
+spaniels listened, half-heartedly, but the others made holiday.
+Furthermore, eighty-four bulldogs would not permit themselves to be
+muzzled, and this added to Smith’s difficulties. Thus, on the fifth day
+of the singular experiment, Smith, hearing a remarkable hullaballoo
+belowstairs (he worked in the attic), descended to the parlor, where he
+discovered the bulldogs engaged in a sort of tug-of-war, using a body
+Brussels carpet as a rope. (The case’s mother had several days before
+retreated to French Lick, in a rundown condition.)
+
+Smith grasped the carpet firmly, with some idea of wresting it away
+from the dogs, whereupon all of them save three began to pull against
+him.[7] The Exaggeration Complex under which the case was laboring
+gave him strength enough to meet with some small success in his first
+efforts to take the carpet away from the dogs. He pulled them as far
+as the bay window in the parlor, largely because they had not settled
+down seriously to winning. When they did, however, the total of three
+hundred and twenty-four solidly implanted feet and the virtually
+immeasurable tugging potentiality were too much for Smith. He was
+slowly pulled out into the hall, through the front door, and into the
+street. He stubbornly contested every inch of the way until a drug
+store, three blocks away, was reached. Here some one had the presence
+of mind to call out the fire department.
+
+[7] These three had closed their eyes, to hang on, and did not see
+Smith.
+
+[Illustration: _UNCONSCIOUS DRAWING: PLATE II._
+
+_This was drawn by Peter Zinsner, 564 DeKalb Avenue, Brooklyn, without
+knowing it. We here see Sublimation in conflict with the Libido. Peter
+has reached a point in life where women seem so divine he doesn’t dare
+call them up on the phone. Yet_ they _still call_ him.]
+
+Dr. Matthiessen, who took the case at about this period in its
+development, attempted to reduce the Magnification of Objective,
+first by Analytic Reasoning, and then by cold applications. Neither was
+successful. Matthiessen could not divert the libido. Smith declined
+to resume his interest in the feminine object of his affections, and
+insisted that his experiment with puzzles was a glorious project for
+the benefit of mankind.
+
+It was sheer accident that saved the patient—not Dr. Matthiessen.
+Smith finally refused Dr. Matthiessen admittance to his house, nor
+would he go to the doctor’s office, claiming that he did not believe
+in psychology, but one day he dropped one of the little pigs-in-clover
+puzzles and broke the glass in it. He then found that he did not have
+to roll the balls into the openings, _but could push them in with his
+finger_. He got a hammer and broke the glass in all the thousands of
+puzzles he had brought to his home for the dogs, and solved every one
+of the puzzles by pushing, not rolling. This instantly released him
+from his complex by the Gordian Knot principle of complex release. He
+thus gained the necessary confidence and sense of power to feel worthy
+of the woman with whom he was in love, and he finally married her. The
+marriage was of average success.
+
+[Illustration: _This drawing was made from an old 1901 lantern slide
+often used by Dr. Karl Zaner in his illustrated lecture, “What Can
+We Learn from Animals?” Dr. Zaner has always contended that we can
+learn nothing of importance from animals beyond a few pointers on
+the art of relaxation. “Their general activities are, as a rule, not
+only meaningless to man, but frequently to themselves as well. This
+particular cat, for example, probably had nothing special in mind at
+all.”_]
+
+Marriages, however, were frequently delayed much longer than in the
+case of George Smith, and it was not, indeed, until 1909 that the usual
+norm was restored. Meanwhile, in between the time of the first general
+separation of the physical and the psychic in this country, and the
+final culmination in marriages, a period of sublimation set in. This
+followed directly on the heels of the remarkable and lamentable era
+of preoccupation with trivial diversions and was characterized by an
+extravert interest in truly important projects and activities. The
+airplane was brought to a high stage of development, the telephone
+transmitter was perfected, tungsten replaced carbon as a filament for
+incandescent lamps, better books were written, art progressed, there
+was a cultural advance generally and the birth of a new Æsthetic,
+and people began to get at the real facts in the Thaw case.
+Nevertheless, Pedestalism has left its serious effects. It is doubtful
+if they will fully wear off for another fifty or seventy-five years.
+
+[Illustration: (Sketch of dog running.)]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+HOW TO TELL LOVE FROM PASSION
+
+
+At a certain point in every person’s amours, the question arises: “Am I
+in love, or am I merely inflamed by passion?”
+
+It is a disturbing question. Usually it arises at some inopportune
+moment: at the start of a letter, in the middle of an embrace, at the
+end of a day in the country. If the person could supply a direct,
+simple, positive answer—if he could say convincingly, “I am in love,”
+or, “This is not love, this is passion”—he would spare himself many
+hours of mental discomfort. Almost nobody can arrive at so simple a
+reply. The conclusion a man commonly arrives at, after tossing the
+argument about, is something after this fashion: “I am in love, all
+right, but just the same I don’t like the way I looked at Miriam last
+night.” Or, “Mirabel is a tidy little wench, and in that case why do
+I waste time composing a quatrain for her, to be sent with a crushed
+spray of lilac? Why don’t I just go right over?”
+
+[Illustration: “_At a certain point in every person’s amours, the
+question arises: ‘Am I in love, or am I merely inflamed by passion?’_”]
+
+One reason a man has trouble telling love from passion is because
+neither term has been clearly defined. Even after one has experienced
+love, one finds difficulty defining it. Likewise, one may define it and
+then have all kinds of trouble experiencing it, because, once having
+defined it, one is in too pompous a frame of mind ever again to submit
+to its sweet illusion. By and large, love is easier to experience
+before it has been explained—easier and cleaner. The same holds true
+of passion. Understanding the principles of passion is like knowing
+how to drive a car; once mastered, all is smoothed out; no more does
+one experience the feeling of perilous adventure, the misgivings, the
+diverting little hesitancies, the wrong turns, the false starts, the
+glorious insecurity. All is smoothed out, and all, so to speak, is lost.
+
+The word “love” is used loosely by writers, and they know it.
+Furthermore, the word “love” is accepted loosely by readers, and _they_
+know it. There are many kinds of love, but for the purposes of this
+article I shall confine my discussion to the usual hazy interpretation:
+the strange bewilderment which overtakes one person on account of
+another person. Thus, when I say love in this article, you will take
+it to mean _the pleasant confusion which we know exists_. When I say
+passion, I _mean_ passion.
+
+[Illustration: _UNCONSCIOUS DRAWING: PLATE III._
+
+  _This is the work of Grace McFadden, aged 11, of Bucyrus, Ohio
+  (R. F. D. # 3, Bucyrus 6021, Ring 3), and was drawn on the day
+  that Principal K. L. Mooney, of the Paulding County Concentration
+  Grade Schools, was married. Here the Pleasure-Principle and the
+  Wish Motive are both overshadowed by the Bridegroom Fallacy._]
+
+I have mentioned that the question of deciding whether a feeling be
+love or passion arises at inopportune moments, such as at the start
+of a letter. Let us say you have sat down to write a letter to your
+lady. There has been a normal amount of preparation for the ordeal,
+such as clearing a space on the desk (in doing which you have become
+momentarily interested in a little article in last month’s _Scribner’s_
+called, “Plumbing the Savage,” and have stood for a minute reading
+the first page and deciding to let it go), and the normal amount of
+false alarms, such as sitting down and discovering that you have no
+cigarettes. (Note: if you think you can write the letter without
+cigarettes, it is not love, it is passion.) Finally you get settled
+and you write the words; “Anne darling.” If you like commas, you put a
+comma after “darling”; if you like colons, a colon; if dashes, a dash.
+If you don’t care _what_ punctuation mark you put after “darling,” the
+chances are you are in love—although you may just be uneducated, who
+knows?
+
+Now, you have written the words “Anne darling” and have put a
+punctuation mark there. You pause for just a second, and in that
+second you are lost. “Darling?” you say to yourself. “Darling? Is she
+my darling, or isn’t she? And if she _is_ my darling, as I have so
+brazenly set down on this sheet of paper, what caused me to take such a
+long, critical look at the girl in the red-and-brown scarf this morning
+when I was breakfasting in the Brevoort? If I can be all aglow about a
+girl in a red-and-brown scarf in the early morning, is Anne my darling,
+or am I just kidding myself?”
+
+Then follows a brief estimate of the comparative beauty of Anne and
+the girl in the scarf, with the girl in the scarf coming out half a
+length ahead. This is followed by a short dialogue which you hold with
+yourself.
+
+“What if she _was_ prettier?” you say. “What does that amount to?
+I’m not a child. I know there’s more to the story than mere physical
+beauty.”
+
+[Illustration: _AMERICAN MALE POSTURES: PLATE I._
+
+  _American men, more than any others, permit the complexities of
+  the psycho-physical world to get them down. Often, while down,
+  they will pass each other going somewhere, and exchange a small
+  greeting._]
+
+“What more is there?” you quietly demand, testing yourself out.
+
+“Oh, there’s quality of mind, and community of interest, and chemical
+attraction (chemical attraction is a term you’ve picked up recently
+from reading books on sex and life). When I get right down to it, if I
+were to meet that girl in the scarf, I probably wouldn’t like her.”
+
+“No, but you want to meet her, all the samey, don’t you?”
+
+“Well ... I mean ... a man can’t; I mean....”
+
+“Yah, you know you want to meet her!”
+
+“Aw, shut up!”
+
+Having got nowhere with that theme, you again bend to the mighty task
+of writing the first sentence of the letter. A minute or two of quiet
+brooding and the truth comes to you that you have nothing to say, that
+you wrote all the news yesterday, that you consider it pretty silly to
+be writing another letter so soon, and that if anyone were to ask you,
+you don’t really want to write Anne a letter at all.
+
+“Well, so that’s the way the wind blows!” you say to yourself,
+contemptuously. “So _that’s_ the way things are between Anne and you!
+Not wanting to write her. So it’s come to that. Well, it’s about
+time you got wise to yourself. If you don’t love Anne it’s certainly
+high time you found it out, in justice to both Anne and yourself. In
+other words, you never loved Anne at all—you merely gave in to an
+infatuation. You were thinking about the physical side of the affair;
+yes, sir, you _desired_ Anne, that’s what you did. You _desired_ her!
+Why, you dirty, low-down, two-faced old voluptuary you....”
+
+The utter shame of this situation breaks your spirit and you lay down
+your pen, light up a cigarette, and pace up and down the room. Suddenly
+you dash to the desk, with a look of woeful determination, seize the
+pen, and write (after the words “Anne darling,” which are good and dry
+by this time): “I have been wanting to tell you something for a long
+time. We must look things straight in the face, Anne.” You then look
+things straight in the face for ten minutes, during which you don’t
+write a word, and end by tearing the letter up and quickly dashing off
+another, which reads: “Anne, I’m awfully tired tonight, nervous, etc.,
+and if I wrote you it would just be a bunch of hooey, so think I will
+wait till tomorrow before writing. Love, Bert.” This you mail at the
+corner and spend the rest of the evening trying to read “Plumbing the
+Savage,” which results finally in sleep—sleep troubled by dreams of
+savages wearing loin cloths of a familiar red-and-brown material.
+
+This vexing disbelief in one’s own illusion of love is experienced
+most alarmingly by persons of literary inclinations. Yet with them
+the reaction comes in quite the opposite manner. Writing is a form
+of sexual expression (Zaner goes further: he says writing _is_ sex),
+and it takes just as much out of a person. Thus, a person with a bent
+for creative literature approaches the task of writing a love letter
+with an excitation of the spirit surpassing anything in the realm of
+pure eroticism. He anticipates it for hours, mulling over in his mind
+the possible material, enlarging on anecdotes, rounding off pledges
+of affection, sharpening similes, sharpening pencils; he comes to the
+writing of it with immense zeal and a rather nice control of lyrical
+prose; he ends on a splendidly poised and correctly balanced note of
+tenderness and faith and love; and then, having signed, sealed, and
+posted the missive, is suddenly overcome by the realization that by
+the very act of composition he has annulled the allure of the subject
+herself—cares no more about her, for the moment, than he does for an
+old piece of butcher’s twine, which, all in all, is so alarming a
+discovery that he usually gets a little bit sick thinking about it, and
+has to go out somewhere and hear some music.
+
+I have seldom met an individual of literary tastes or propensities in
+whom the writing of love was not directly attributable to the love of
+writing.
+
+[Illustration: _UNCONSCIOUS DRAWING: PLATE IV._
+
+_The mood captured in this drawing is a rare one indeed, and Dr. Karl
+Zaner considers the sketch the finest in his collection. Here the
+masculine sense of Ironic Detachment rises superior to the Love Urge
+and can take it or let it alone. The drawing was sent to Dr. Zaner by
+Mrs. Walter L. Mouse (née Kathleen Schaaf), recently divorced wife of
+the author of the drawing, Walter L. Mouse, of Columbus, Ohio._]
+
+A person of this sort falls terribly in love, but in the end it
+turns out that he is more bemused by a sheet of white paper than a
+sheet of white bed linen. He would rather leap into print with his
+lady than leap into bed with her. (This first pleases the lady and
+then annoys her. She wants him to do both, and with virtually the same
+impulse.)
+
+
+UNCERTAINTY IN THE MIDDLE OF AN EMBRACE
+
+There is no more disturbing experience in the rich gamut of life than
+when a young man discovers, in the midst of an embrace, that he is
+taking the episode quite calmly and is taking the kiss for what it is
+worth. His doubts and fears start from this point and there is no end
+to them. He doesn’t know whether it’s love or passion. In fact, in the
+confusion of the moment he’s not quite sure it isn’t something else,
+like forgery. He certainly doesn’t see how it can be love.
+
+Let us examine this incident. He has been sitting, we’ll say, on a
+porch with his beloved. They have been talking of this and that, with
+the quiet intimacy of lovers. After a bit he takes her in his arms and
+kisses her—not once, but several times. It is not a new experience to
+him; he has had other girls, and he has had plenty of other kisses from
+this one. This time, however, something happens. The young man, instead
+of losing himself in the kiss, _finds_ himself in it. What’s more, the
+girl to him loses her identity—she becomes just anyone on whom he is
+imposing his masculinity. Instead of his soul being full of the ecstasy
+which is traditionally associated with love’s expression, his soul is
+just fiddling around. The young man is thinking to himself:
+
+“Say, this is pretty nice now!”
+
+Well, that scares him. Up to this point in the affair he has been
+satisfied that his feeling was that of love. Now he doesn’t know what
+to think. In all his life he has never come across a character in a
+book or a movie who, embracing his beloved, was heard to say, “This is
+pretty nice,” except that character was a villain. He becomes a mass
+of conflicting emotions, and is so thoroughly skeptical and worried
+about the state of his heart that he will probably take to reading
+sociological books to find out if it’s O.K. to go ahead, or whether,
+as a gentleman, it’s his duty to step out before he further defames a
+sweet girl and soils her womanhood.
+
+The medical profession recognizes two distinct types of men: first, the
+type that believes that to love a woman is not to desire her; second,
+the type that believes that to desire a woman is not to love her. The
+medical profession rests.
+
+This young man whom I’ve just mentioned (the rogue who found himself
+having a good time in the midst of a kiss) now takes seriously to
+books. Matters go from bad to worse. Hoping to find, in sexology,
+some explanation for his conduct which would indicate that, if not
+decent, it at least was not without precedent, he searches relentlessly
+until he comes upon a chapter on “The Theory of the Libido.” (Note:
+it makes any young man a little mad to discover that he has a
+_pleasure-principle_, but there it is just the same.) On page 464 he
+finds this paragraph:
+
+“The ideal healthy outcome is to find the child in whom the process
+of repression has been accomplished with no fixations of interest at
+lower stages of adaptation, in whom the Œdipus complex has passed into
+a ‘normal’ phase of the castration complex inhibition, and in whom a
+free-movable libido is developing sublimation in active interests free
+from paralyzing inhibitions or anti-social tendencies.”
+
+[Illustration: _This peculiar posture was discovered by Dr. Tithridge
+in a patient who for thirty years, boy and man, had been unable to tell
+love from passion and who allowed it to prey on his mind. Drawing from
+the Tithridge collection of American male postures._]
+
+This brings the young man to the point where he thinks maybe he better
+lay off altogether. He just wasn’t cut out for kissing, he guesses. So
+he writes his girl a letter apologizing for having been a beast, breaks
+the engagement, and goes out to Oregon, where he raises fruit fairly
+successfully and with no anti-social tendencies.
+
+I have taken up the question of Man’s uncertainty about love and
+passion in two different circumstances—at the start of a letter, and
+in the middle of an embrace. It was originally my intention also to
+show how this uncertainty overcomes one _at the end of a day in the
+country_ when a man is so tired that he not only can’t distinguish
+love from passion, but has all he can do to distinguish one station on
+the New Haven railroad from another and often gets out at 125th Street
+by mistake. I say this was my intention; but thus far I have been so
+unsuccessful in explaining the difference between love and passion that
+to go on would be to lay myself open to criticism. The fact of the
+matter is, it’s very difficult to tell love from passion. My advice to
+anyone who doesn’t feel sure of the difference between them is either
+to give them both up or quit trying to split hairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A DISCUSSION OF FEMININE TYPES
+
+
+In speaking of the weaker sex in this book, the authors usually confine
+themselves to the generalization “Woman,” “women,” and “the female.”
+For the larger discussions of sex, these comprehensive terms suffice.
+Yet no examination of the pitiable problem of Man and Woman would be
+complete without some effort to define a few of the more important
+types of the female. One cannot say, “Oh, well, you know how women
+are,” and let it go at that. Many truths apply, and many foibles are
+common, to the whole sex, but the varieties of the female of the
+species are as manifold as the varieties of the flower called the
+cineraria.
+
+[Illustration: “_Successfully to deal with a woman, a man must know
+what type she is._”]
+
+Successfully to deal with a woman, a man must know what type she is.
+There have been several methods of classification, none of which I
+hold thoroughly satisfactory, neither the glandular categories—the
+gonoid, thyroid, etc.—nor the astrological—Sagittarius, Virgo, Pisces,
+and so on. One must be pretty expert to tell a good gonoid when he sees
+one. Personally, I know but very little about them, nor if I had a vast
+knowledge would I know what to do with it. It is even more difficult,
+and just as unimportant, to arrive at a zodiacal classification,
+because that is altogether dependent upon determining the year the
+woman was born, and because, even if you should ascertain her date of
+birth, the pish-tosh of analysis and prediction which derives therefrom
+is a lot of mediæval guesswork. Or so it seems to me, and to Zaner,
+Blifil, Gorley, Peschkar, Rittenhouse, and Matthiessen.
+
+Of much greater importance is a classification of females by actions.
+It comes out finally, the nature of a woman, in what she does—her
+little bag of tricks, as one might say.
+
+A type of which one hears a great deal but which has never been very
+ably or scientifically analyzed, for the guidance of men, is the Quiet
+Type. How often one hears the warning, “Look out for the Quiet Type.”
+Let us see if we should look out for it, and why.
+
+The element of menace in the Quiet Type is commonly considered very
+great. Yet if one asks a man who professes knowledge of the type, why
+one should look out for it, one gets but a vague answer. “Just look
+out, that’s all,” he usually says. When I began my researches I was,
+in spite of myself, somewhat inhibited by an involuntary subscription
+to this legendary fear. I found it difficult to fight off a baseless
+alarm in the presence of a lady of subdued manner. Believing, however,
+that the best defense is an offense, I determined to carry the war, as
+it were, into the enemy’s country. The first Quiet Type, or Q.T., that
+I isolated was a young woman whom I encountered at a Sunday tea party.
+She sat a little apart from the rest of the group in a great glazed
+chintz, I believe it was, chair. Her hands rested quietly on the chair
+arms. She kept her chin rather down than up, and had a way of lifting
+her gaze slowly, without disturbing the set of her chin. She moved but
+twice, once to put by a cup of tea and once to push back a stray lock
+from her forehead. I stole glances at her from time to time, trying to
+make them appear ingenuous and friendly rather than bold or suggestive,
+an achievement rendered somewhat troublesome by an unfortunate
+involuntary winking of the left eyelid to which I am unhappily subject.
+
+I noted that her eyes, which were brown, had a demure light in them.
+She was dressed simply and was quite pretty. She spoke but once or
+twice, and then only when spoken to. In a chance shifting of the guests
+to an adjacent room to examine, I believe, some water colors, I was
+left quite alone with her. Steeling myself for an ordeal to which I am
+unused—or was at the time—I moved directly to her side and grasped her
+hand. “Hallo, baby! Some fun—hah?” I said—a method of attack which I
+had devised in advance. She was obviously shocked, and instantly rose
+from her chair and followed the others into the next room. I never saw
+her again, nor have I been invited to that little home since. Now for
+some conclusions.
+
+Patently, this particular Q.T., probably due to an individual
+variation, was not immediately dangerous in the sense that she would
+seize an opportunity, such as I offered her, to break up the home of,
+or at least commit some indiscretion with, a man who was obviously—I
+believe I may say—a dependable family man with the average offhand
+attractions. Dr. White has criticized my methodology in this particular
+case, a criticism which I may say now, in all good humor, since the
+danger is past, once threatened to interpose insuperable obstacles, of
+a temperamental nature, in the way of this collaboration. It was his
+feeling that I might just as well have removed one of the type’s shoes
+as approach her the way I did. I cannot hold with him there. Neither,
+I am gratified to say, can Zaner, but in fairness to White it is only
+just to add that Tithridge can.
+
+However, the next Q.T. that I encountered I placed under observation
+more gradually. I used to see her riding on a Fifth Avenue bus, always
+at a certain hour. I took to riding on this bus also, and discreetly
+managed to sit next her on several occasions. She eventually noticed
+that I appeared to be cultivating her and eyed me quite candidly, with
+a look I could not at once decipher. I could now, but at that time I
+couldn’t. I resolved to put the matter to her quite frankly, to tell
+her, in fine, that I was studying her type and that I wished to place
+her under closer observation. Therefore, one evening, I doffed my hat
+and began.
+
+[Illustration: _The Quiet Type._]
+
+“Madam,” I said, “I would greatly appreciate making a leisurely
+examination of you, at your convenience.” She struck me with the palm
+of her open hand, got up from her seat, and descended at the next
+even-numbered street—Thirty-sixth, I believe it was.
+
+I may as well admit here and now that personally I enjoyed at no time
+any great success with Q.T’s. I think one may go as far as to say
+that any scientific examination of the Quiet Type, as such, is out of
+the question. I know of no psychologist who has ever got one alone
+long enough to get anywhere. (Tithridge has averred that he began too
+late in life; Zaner that he does not concur in the major premise.)
+The Quiet Type is not amenable to the advances of scientific men when
+the advances are of a scientific nature, and also when they are of
+any other nature. Indeed, it is one of the unfortunate handicaps to
+psychological experimentation that many types of women do not lend
+themselves readily to purposeful study. As one woman said to me, “It
+all seems so mapped out, kind of.”
+
+I am a little reluctant to report one other adventure with the Quiet
+Type, and that is why I seem to have summed up in the preceding
+paragraph without mentioning it. However, I now feel that some
+brief outline of the case I have alluded to should be set down
+here—especially after all this allusion. This young lady was a guest
+at a week-end party where I was also a guest. On Saturday evening it
+began to appear, quite early, that there was going to be considerable
+drinking. And, to be sure, there was. Among those who became, as the
+fellow said, a little bit uncertain of themselves, were the young Q.T.
+and myself. It was, in all truth, largely her fault that I reached a
+state of abandon from which, at her further solicitation, it was but an
+easy step to a feeling of sheer devil-may-care. This condition, it is
+perhaps unnecessary to say, militates against that fine precision of
+mind so essential to the best results in any scientific investigation.
+
+I do not remember all that ensued one-half so clearly as I should
+like to. I have often thought deeply on the matter, striving to
+reconstruct the complete scene, as it were, but my efforts have been
+hampered by the lamentable fact that I found dwelling upon the more
+easily remembered scenes so delightful that I simply dwelt on them. I
+remember, for example, that I was at the piano, or more exactly, on
+it—standing on it. The Quiet Type, fearing that I might fall, grasped
+me firmly about the knees, and I did fall. I was not only uninjured,
+but I got to my feet laughing. At this she began to laugh. I had lost
+my glasses in the fall, and began hunting for them. In bending over,
+however, I was assailed by a slight touch of vertigo, which runs in my
+family, and fell again.
+
+[Illustration: _I asked her how I had reached the cliff—if I had walked
+there. “Partly,” she said._]
+
+The next that I remember is sitting on the edge of a cliff, or
+_falaise_, as the French call it, looking out over a lake. The young
+lady was beside me. “Well,” she said, “what shall we do next?” I asked
+her how I had reached the cliff—if I had walked there. “Partly,” she
+said. This set me to thinking. “I have lost my glasses,” I said, and
+began hunting for them again. She again seized me by the knees, and I
+fell. In falling, both of us became enormously involved. I instantly
+arose and was about to step into the lake, when she grasped me around
+the waist. We both sat down. “You have gone as far as you can,” she
+said, and tittered. “I should like to go a little farther,” said
+I. She arose. “You’re a funny man,” she said, and laughed again. I
+grasped her, much to my surprise, by one ankle, and she began to topple
+toward the lake. I fell heavily backward, pulling her with me, and
+this doubtless saved her life. “You must be more careful,” I told her.
+We sat up. “Don’t you think you better take me home?” she said, in a
+singular voice—low and odd. “Rather,” I responded, and arose. I took
+her back to the house, which was some half-mile distant, we joined the
+others, and that is all I remember.
+
+I shall always regret, of course, that I did not have full possession
+of my faculties during the walk to the cliff’s edge, for there might
+have been, in the ten or fifteen minutes it must have taken, an
+excellent opportunity to “get at” the young woman. There is nothing
+quite so provocative of pleasant, revelatory talk as a quiet walk with
+some one at night. However, the episode ended as I have said, and a
+golden opportunity was lost.
+
+In my very failures I made, I believe, certain significant findings
+in regard to the Quiet Type. It is not dangerous to men, but to a
+particular man. Apparently it lies in wait for some one individual
+and gets him. Being got by this special type, or even being laid in
+wait for, would seem to me in some cases not without its pleasurable
+compensations. Wherein, exactly, the menace lies, I have no means of
+knowing. I have my moments when I think I see what it is, but I have
+other moments when I think I don’t.
+
+[Illustration: _The Buttonhole-twister Type._]
+
+The Buttonhole-twister Type is much easier to come at. A girl of this
+persuasion works quite openly. She has the curious habit of insinuating
+a finger, usually the little finger of the right hand, unless she be
+left-handed, into the lapel buttonhole of a gentleman, and twisting it.
+Usually, she picks out a man who is taller than herself and usually she
+gets him quite publicly, in parks, on street corners, and the like.
+Often, while twisting, she will place the toe of her right shoe on the
+ground, with the heel elevated, and will swing the heel slowly through
+an arc of about thirty or thirty-five degrees, back and forth. This
+manifestation is generally accompanied by a wistful, far-away look on
+the woman’s face, and she but rarely gazes straight at the man. She
+invariably goes in for negative statements during the course of her
+small writhings, such as “It is not,” “I am not,” “I don’t believe you
+do,” and the like. This type is demonstrative in her affections and
+never lies in wait with any subtlety. She is likely to be restless and
+discontented with the married state, largely because she will want to
+go somewhere that her husband does not want to go, or will not believe
+he has been to the places that he says he just came from. It is well to
+avoid this type.
+
+[Illustration: _I am told that one type has actually been known to get
+the man of her choice down and sit, as it were, side-saddle of him._]
+
+A charming but altogether dangerous type is the “Don’t, dear” Type. By
+assuming a middle of the road, this way and that way, attitude toward a
+gentleman’s advances, she will at once allure and repulse him. The man
+will thus be twice allured. He calls on her, and they sit in the porch
+swing, let us say. When he slips his arm around her, she will say in a
+low tone, “Don’t, dear.” No matter what he does, she will say, “Don’t,
+dear.” This type is a homemaker. Unless the man wants a home made for
+him within a very short time, it is better for him to observe the
+“don’t” rather than the “dear,” and depart. The type is common in the
+Middle West, particularly in university towns, or was some few years
+ago, at any rate. Any effort to classify modern university types would
+be difficult and confusing. They change from year to year, and vary
+with the region. I am told that one type has actually been known to get
+the man of her choice down and sit, as it were, side-saddle of him. I
+would not give even this brief mention, in passing, to college types of
+the female, were they not important because they so frequently divert
+a man from his career and tie him down before he has a chance to begin
+working, or even to say anything.
+
+The rest of the types of American women, such as the Outdoors, the
+Clinging Vine, and so on and so on, are too generally known to need
+any special comment here. If a man does not know one when he sees it,
+or cannot tell one from another, of these more common types, there is
+little that can be done for him. No man should contemplate marriage, or
+even mingle with women, unless he has a certain measure of intuition
+about these more obvious types. For example, if a man could not tell
+instantly that a woman was the sort that would keep him playing tennis,
+or riding horseback, all afternoon, and then expect him to ride back
+and forth all night on the ferry, no amount of description of the
+Outdoors Type would be of any avail.
+
+There is, however, one phenomenal modern type, a product of these
+strange post-war years, which will bear a brief analysis. This is the
+type represented by the girl who gets right down to a discussion of sex
+on the occasion of her first meeting with a man, but then goes on to
+betray a great deal of alarm and aversion to the married state. This
+is the “I-can’t-go-through-with-it” Type. Many American virgins fall
+within this classification. Likewise it contains women who have had
+some strange and bitter experience about which they do a great deal
+of hinting but which they never clearly explain. If involved with, or
+even merely presented to, a woman of this type, no man in his right
+mind will do anything except reach for his hat. Science does not
+know what is the matter with these women, or whether anything is the
+matter. A lot of reasons have been advanced for girls acting in this
+incredible, dismayed manner—eleven reasons in all, I believe—but no one
+really knows very much about it. It may be their mothers’ teaching, it
+may have been some early childhood experience, such as getting caught
+under a gate, or suffering a severe jolting up by being let fall when a
+boy jumped off the other end of a teeter-totter, or it may simply be a
+whim. We do not know. One thing is sure, they are never the Quiet Type.
+They talk your arm off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION: BEING A RATHER COMPLETE SURVEY OF THE ENTIRE
+SEXUAL SCENE
+
+
+The sexual revolution began with Man’s discovery that he was not
+attractive to Woman, as such. The lion had his mane, the peacock his
+gorgeous plumage, but Man found himself in a three-button sack suit.
+His masculine appearance not only failed to excite Woman, but in many
+cases it only served to bore her. The result was that Man found it
+necessary to develop attractive personal traits to offset his dull
+appearance. He learned to say funny things. He learned to smoke, and
+blow smoke rings. He learned to earn money. This would have been
+a solution to his difficulty, but in the course of making himself
+attractive to Woman by developing himself mentally, he inadvertently
+became so intelligent an animal that he saw how comical the whole
+situation was.
+
+Thus, at the very start of the sexual revolution, Man faced one
+very definite problem: in becoming mentally “aware,” he had become
+intellectually critical, and had discovered that it was increasingly
+difficult to make up his mind whether he really desired any one woman,
+however capable he was of getting her. It was the heyday of monogamy,
+and in order to contemplate marriage, it was necessary for a man to
+decide on One Particular Woman. This he found next to impossible, for
+the reason that he had unconsciously set up so many mental barriers and
+hazards.
+
+Let me mention a few.
+
+(1) The fear that his fiancée might get fat inside of a few years. To
+any mentally alert man, this thought was a strong deterrent. Quite
+often the man met the girl’s parents. He would quickly size up her
+mother and make a mental calculation as to how long it would be before
+the daughter was in the same boat. Somehow, it took the bloom off
+the romance. If he was not fortunate enough to meet the parents of the
+young lady, he was quite apt to note things about her own conformation
+that seemed prophetic. A slight thickness in the neck, a trace of
+rotundity in the bosom, a touch too much ankle. In these portents he
+found much discomfort, and was quite likely to call the engagement off.
+
+[Illustration: “_The lion had his mane ... but man found himself in a
+  three-button sack suit._”]
+
+(2) The use of a word, phrase, or punctuation mark by his fiancée that
+annoyed him. In these early days of the sex awakening, it was not at
+all uncommon to find examples of the girl’s using some slight phrase
+which had a grating effect. It was often the case that the man was
+literarily inclined—because literary inclinations were early found
+to be advantageous in sex, almost as advantageous, in fact, as the
+peacock’s tail—and if this was the case the man was doubly sensitive to
+the curious little crudities, niceties, whimsies, and circumlocutions
+which women were afflicted with. I am thinking at the moment of the
+case of a young man who, in his junior year in college, had found the
+girl he believed ideal for him to marry, and then one day learned,
+quite by accident, that she was in the habit of using the word “Howdy”
+as a form of salutation. He did not like “Howdy,” although he did not
+know why. Days and nights he spent trying to reconcile himself to the
+idea of it, weighing the young lady’s extreme beauty and affability
+against her one flaw. In the end he decided he could not stomach it,
+and broke the troth.
+
+(3) Difference in height. If a man fell in love with a woman taller
+than himself (which sometimes happened), he became morose from dwelling
+on the objections to such an alliance. This particular situation
+usually had a way of settling itself automatically: there were so many
+reasons, real or imaginary, why the man felt that the marriage was
+impossible, that just the mere business of thinking about them broke
+him in health and he died, leaving a margin of several weeks before the
+date of the wedding.
+
+[Illustration: “_He would quickly size up the mother and make a mental
+  calculation as to how long it would be before the daughter was in
+  the same boat._”]
+
+(4) The suspicion that if he waited twenty-four hours, or possibly
+less, he would likely find a lady even more ideally suited to his
+taste than his fiancée. Every man entertained such a suspicion.
+Entertained it royally. He was greatly strengthened in his belief by
+the fact that he kept catching a fleeting glimpse of this imaginary
+person—in restaurants, in stores, in trains. To deny the possibility
+of her existence would be, he felt, to do a grave injustice to her,
+to himself, and to his fiancée. Man’s unflinching desire to give
+himself and everybody else a square deal was the cause of much of his
+disturbance. Man had become, you see, a thinking being. He had come
+to know enough about permutations and combinations to realize that
+with millions of Caucasian females to choose from, the chances of his
+choosing the ideal mate were almost zero.
+
+[Illustration: _Male Type (eastern seaboard). Definitely interested in,
+but uncertain what to do about, the Female. To men of this type many
+aspects of the Sexual Revolution never became clear at all._]
+
+So matters went. Man, we have seen, had begun to develop himself so
+that he would be attractive to Woman, and in doing so had made Woman of
+doubtful attraction to _him_. He had become independent. He had become
+critical. He had become scared. Sex was awakening and it was all Man
+could do to keep from laughing.
+
+Woman, on her part, saw dimly what was going on in the world. She saw
+it through the sweet haze of Dream. She caught glimpses of it in the
+mirror of her Narcissistic soul.[8] Woman was at the crossroads. She
+had many ways open to her, but she chose one: _she chose to imitate
+Man_. At a time when sex was in transition, she had the bad judgment
+to begin a career of independence for herself, in direct imitation of
+her well-meaning mate. She took up smoking. She began to earn money
+(not much, but some). She drank. She subordinated domesticity to
+individuality—of which she had very little. She attained to a certain
+independence, a cringing independence, a wistful, half-regretful state.
+Men and women both became slightly regretful: men regretted that they
+had no purple tail to begin with, women that they had ever been fools
+enough to go to work. Women now “understood life,” but life had been so
+much more agreeable in its original mystery.
+
+[8] This is the first mention in this article of Narcissism. You’ll
+hear more about it, don’t worry.
+
+And now we come to Sex.[9] Woman, observing that her mate went out
+of his way to make himself entertaining, rightly surmised that sex
+had something to do with it. From that she logically concluded that
+sex was recreational rather than procreational. (The small, hardy
+band of girls who failed to get this point were responsible for the
+popularity of women’s field hockey in this country, 1911–1921.) As
+though in a vision, the “right to be sexual” came to women. They fell
+to with a will. For thousands of years they had been content merely
+to be amiable, and now they were going to be sexual. The transition
+from amiability to sexuality was revolutionary.[10] It presented a
+terrific problem to Woman, because in acquiring and assuming the habits
+that tended to give her an equality with Man, she discovered that she
+necessarily became a good deal _like_ Man. The more she got like him,
+the less he saw in her. (Or so he liked to think, anyway.) Just as
+soon as she began to put her own sex on an even basis, she found that
+he lost interest. Her essential Narcissism (pleasure of looking in
+a mirror) was met by his Begonia-ism (concept of the potted plant).
+Things got so that Woman spent _all_ her time admiring herself in
+mirrors, and Man, discouraged, devoted himself quietly to raising
+begonias, which are fairly easy to raise. Sex atrophied.
+
+[9] Are you glad?
+
+[10] Zaner claims it was also amusing.
+
+[Illustration: “_Sex atrophied._”]
+
+But, as I say, sex was in the transition stage. Woman soon began to
+outgrow her Narcissism and was satisfied to snatch quick glances of
+herself in make-shift mirrors, such as the backs of watches, the shiny
+fenders of automobiles, plateglass windows, subway weighing machines,
+and such. Convinced that sex was not sin, she set out joyously to study
+it. How hard she studied has recently been apparent, even to persons
+who read only a few books a year.
+
+New York became the capital of the sexual revolution. It was
+conveniently located, had a magnificent harbor,[11] a high mortality
+rate, and some of the queerest-shaped apartments to be found anywhere.
+There are apartments in New York in which one must step across an open
+bathtub in going from the kitchen to the bedroom; any unusual layout
+like that arouses sexual desire and brings people pouring into New York
+from other cities. New York became the Mecca for young ladies from the
+South and from the Middle West whose minds were not quite made up about
+sexual freedom, but who thought that if they could once get to New York
+and into an irregular apartment, the answer might come to them.
+
+[11] New York has one of the finest harbors in the world.
+
+Their mothers were against it.
+
+“Now what can you get in New York that you can’t get right here at
+home?” their mothers said.
+
+“Concerts, new plays, and the opera,” the daughters invariably replied.
+There has never, to my knowledge, been a case of a young lady telling
+her mother that she wanted to go to New York because she was seeking
+an outlet for her erotic eagerness. It was always concerts that she
+wanted. Often it turned out to be concerts that she got.
+
+When she arrived in New York and secured her unfurnished apartment
+(usually in West Fourth Street), her mental elation was so great and
+her activity in making parchment lamp shades so unabating that for the
+first couple of weeks she let sex go. Women are notoriously apt to get
+off the track; no man ever was diverted from the gratification of his
+desires by a parchment lamp shade. At any rate, the young lady was
+so tired at night she could hardly keep her eyes open, much less her
+mind. Furthermore, she was beginning to have _Schmalhausen_ trouble.
+_Schmalhausen_ trouble is a common ailment among girls in their
+twenties. It usually attacks girls who have taken a small apartment
+(_schmalhausen_) and are reading the behaviorism essays of Samuel D.
+Schmalhausen. The effect of sitting within narrow walls and absorbing
+a wide viewpoint breaks down their health. The pain that they suffer
+during this period is caused by their discovery of the lyrical duality,
+or two-sidedness, of life—a discovery that unbalances all sensitive
+young ladies in whom sex cries for expression. Even in a New York
+apartment there are two sides to everything, and this particularly
+applies to a girl’s potential sexuality.[12]
+
+[12] Girls with a bad case of Schmalhausen sometimes saw as many as
+three sides to sex.
+
+[Illustration: “_Furthermore, she was beginning to have Schmalhausen
+trouble._”]
+
+Let me explain this duality.
+
+The very fact that the young lady had settled in the vicinity of
+Sheridan Square indicates that there was a strong vein of poetry in
+her. She saw life (and sex) through a lyrical haze which tended to
+accentuate its beauty by softening its truths. The whole purpose and
+scheme of poetry is to heighten the tenderness and essential goodness
+of life by a musical elaboration of its traditional worth.[13] Well,
+when the young lady allowed the lyrical possibilities of love to work
+on her mind, it made her mad to remember how candid she had been the
+night before in discussing contraception with the commercial artist
+who lived downstairs. It grew to be a big question in her own mind,
+just what her emancipation ought to consist of: whether it meant having
+lemon skins and gin stoppers in the wash-basin and talking freely of
+exhibitionism and voyeurism, or whether it meant being the recipient
+of some overwhelmingly beautiful passion which her poetical soul still
+prescribed but which she knew couldn’t exist because she was so widely
+read. To stall for time she would make another lamp shade.
+
+[13] See Tithridge’s “Poetry,” but don’t read it.
+
+Days slipped by. Always there was conflict in her soul. She had
+plunged into the “candor régime” whole-heartedly; she could enter a
+roomful of people and say almost anything at all. She also went in for
+nudity—another outlet for sex eagerness. She dallied in the bath, lay
+around the apartment without any clothes on, appeared scantily clad
+at her door when the laundryman called to collect, and week-ends went
+swimming naked in the moonlight with other young people. (Incidentally,
+when she saw what a man looked like without any clothes on, the old
+_Schmalhausen_ trouble came back stronger than ever.)
+
+By and by, because of this very uncertainty of soul, a kind of
+orderliness of habit crept into her life. Unable to decide whether
+sex was the poem she half believed it to be or the casual episode she
+had schooled herself to think it was, she compromised by practically
+giving sex the air. She now held a good job and was earning well.
+Candor and nudity, with an occasional bit of exhibitionism, began
+to satisfy her completely. She was growing older. The apartment was
+nicely decorated now and teeming with lamp shades. She held some good
+industrial stocks and had developed an ambition to write. She became
+content to be literary rather than sexual. She became, in other words,
+that most dangerous of all by-products of the Sexual Revolution—a
+biologico-cultural type. She had a way of leading young men on into
+exhilarating topics, and sitting with them in provocative attitudes,
+and then putting on her hat and going quietly home to bed. In short,
+New York was now home to this girl, this biologico-cultural lady,
+and she was in a fair way to step placidly into a good old-fashioned
+marriage when the right man came along.
+
+And he usually did, the poor yap.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE LILIES-AND-BLUEBIRD DELUSION
+
+
+The young bridegroom who unexpectedly discovers that his wife has
+been brought up in extreme unawareness of the true facts of life and
+believes in some variant of the Birds and Flowers Delusion (that is,
+that birds and flowers have something to do with the emotional life of
+persons), is faced with a situation calling for the greatest tact and
+tenderness. It won’t do any good for him to get mad, or to indulge in
+self-pity, crying, “Oh, how sorry I am for me!” and only a coward would
+go directly into a psycho-neurosis without first trying to win his wife
+over to acceptance of things as they are.
+
+[Illustration: _DR. WALTER TITHRIDGE_
+
+(_after the etching by Veerbluergen_).]
+
+I have in mind the case of a young lady whose silly mother had taught
+her to believe that she would have a little son, three years old,
+named Ronald, as soon as her husband brought a pair of bluebirds
+into a room filled with lilies-of-the-valley. The young woman (to
+say nothing of the young man) was thus made the victim of one of the
+extremest cases of Birds and Flowers Fixation which has ever come to my
+attention. I shall transcribe, from Dr. Tithridge’s notes, the first
+dialogue on the subject that took place between the young couple. This
+dialogue was carefully reconstructed by Tithridge from the account of
+the incident as given by the young husband, who sought his advice and
+counsel.
+
+On the evening of the 25th of June, when the couple were married, the
+young husband entered their hotel suite to find it literally a garden
+of lilies-of-the-valley. He was profoundly touched, but baffled, and
+asked his wife who was dead.
+
+“Where are the bluebirds?” she replied, coyly.
+
+“What bluebirds?” he demanded.
+
+“_The_ bluebirds,” she said, blushing.
+
+Unfortunately, but not unnaturally, the bridegroom did not know what
+the bride was talking about. What was of the extremest importance
+to her, was to her husband merely an idle whim, a shadowy fancy.
+Obviously, the young couple should have talked such matters over long
+before, but they hadn’t, and there they were. He strove to change the
+subject, whistled, lighted cigarettes, for he was nervous enough the
+way it was, but she kept recurring to the bluebirds. His bewilderment
+became tinged with some alarm, for during their courtship he had put
+forth no great effort to examine into her mental capacity, and he
+was now assailed by the excusable suspicion that she was perhaps not
+exactly bright. He talked rapidly, apprehensively, of many things.
+Among the things he talked about were the St. Louis Cardinals (a
+baseball club). From there it was but an easy associative step for his
+wife to go back to the bluebirds again.
+
+“Aren’t you going to _get_ any bluebirds?” she persisted.
+
+“I don’t know where the hell I’d get any bluebirds tonight,” he said,
+rather irritably, “me not being Bo-Peep.”
+
+The nuclear complex was made right then and there. There was a long
+tense silence, after which the bride burst into bitter tears.
+
+“Now, dear,” said her husband, more reasonably, “let’s try to get this
+thing straightened out. What are you talking about, anyway?”
+
+“Sex—if you want to know!” she blurted out, and swooned.
+
+Instead of getting her a glass of water, he excitedly phoned the room
+clerk, but became embarrassed once he had got him, and merely asked
+that a couple of blankets be sent up. It was, unfortunately, as I have
+said, June—and warmish. Thus when the wife revived sufficiently to
+become aware of her surroundings, the husband was standing above her
+holding a pair of blankets, and looking pale and warm.
+
+[Illustration: _“Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common
+during the first year of any marriage.”_]
+
+“What are those for?” she demanded, suspiciously, for the notion had
+now formed in her own mind (Dr. Tithridge feels, and I agree) that she
+very likely had married a dementia præcox case. These mutual suspicions
+of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage,
+but rarely are they aggravated by factors so clearly calculated to
+upset the mental equilibrium as bluebirds at midnight and blankets in
+June. This husband and wife were drifting farther and farther apart.
+The solution to their problem was becoming more and more remote, what
+with this setting up of involved artificial barriers, this almost
+fantastical beclouding of the issue. Dr. Tithridge tells me that he
+believes the young man’s reason would have been permanently dethroned
+had he (Dr. Tithridge) tweeted or chirped like a bird[14] on the
+occasion of the husband’s first visit to him.
+
+[14] Experiments of this sort, calculated to determine the possible
+effects of tweeting, or chirping, in the case of a Birds Fixation,
+fall, of course, outside the province of the psycho-analyst, and not
+only is the legality of their practice questionable, but the value of
+the results obtained is highly doubtful.
+
+When the wife beheld her husband standing there with the blankets, she
+demanded, again, “What are you doing with those blankets?”
+
+“I get cold,” he mumbled, and he proceeded to put the blankets on
+the shelf of a closet which already held several extra pair. He
+was, furthermore, decidedly warm, and kept patting his brow with a
+handkerchief.
+
+“Let’s go out and take a walk,” suggested his wife, apprehensively.
+To this her husband very readily agreed. They were getting afraid to
+stay in the same room with each other, than which there is no other
+condition in the world more certain to break up a marriage. Out in the
+street, among people, they both felt safer, and they wandered to a
+bench in a fairly crowded park, and sat down.
+
+“Where did you get the idea that birds have anything to do with us?”
+demanded the bridegroom.
+
+“My mumsy,”[15] she said.
+
+[15] Young women who allude to their mothers as “mumsy” almost
+invariably present difficult problems in adjustment. The word is a
+sentimentalization of the more common “mamma” and indicates a greater
+dependence upon maternal direction and supervision than may be expected
+in the case of young women who use the more familiar term.
+
+“Well,” he said, “she deceived you.”
+
+“About what?”
+
+“About what you’re talking about.”
+
+“Sex?” she asked.
+
+“That isn’t sex, honey,” he told her. “Birds and flowers are simply ...
+they do not ... that is, we could live all our life without them.”
+
+“I couldn’t,” she said, and, after a pause, “I always feared _you_
+didn’t want children.”
+
+“I do want children. I want you. You want me. Everything is going to be
+all right.”
+
+“How is it?” she demanded.
+
+“In the first place,” he began, pulling at his collar, “it’s this way.
+Now here’s the way it is. Now you take me ... or take you, say. In the
+first place the girl, that is Woman ... why, Woman[16] ...” He lapsed
+into a profound silence.
+
+[16] Explanations of natural phenomena in terms of the collective noun,
+particularly where the noun becomes capitalized in the mind of the
+person striving to explain, are almost never successful.
+
+“Well, go on,” she prompted.
+
+“Well,” he said, “you know how women are, don’t you?”
+
+“Yes,” she said, doubtfully.
+
+“That’s fine,” he said, brightening, “Now women are that way, then——”
+
+“What way?” she asked.
+
+“Why, the way you are ... from me ... than I am, I mean.” He made a
+vague gesture.
+
+“I don’t see what you mean,” she said. Her husband gave a light laugh.
+
+“Hell’s bells, it’s simple enough,” he cried, suddenly, giving the
+light laugh again; “it’s certainly simple enough. Now, here. We’ll take
+Adam and Eve. There they were, all alone, see?”
+
+“There were two bluebirds,” said his wife.
+
+“Not till after the flood, there weren’t,” he corrected her. “Well, he
+found out that there were certain essential differences—what you might
+call on purpose. I mean there must have been some reason. You can count
+on it that things like that just don’t happen. Well, then, he simply
+figured it out—figured out the reason.”
+
+“For what?”
+
+“For all this discrepancy. Obviously it just didn’t happen. It couldn’t
+just have happened. It had to make some sense—nature is like that. So
+he—so he finally—ah—what he did was tell her, see? I mean he asked her.”
+
+“Asked her what?”
+
+“He simply asked her,” said her husband in calm, almost cold tones,—“he
+simply asked her why she thought this was. Is there anything wrong in
+that? And so gradually they understood why it was. It’s as simple as
+that!” He looked at her triumphantly.
+
+“What _are_ you talking about?” she demanded.
+
+“Listen,” he said at last, firmly. “Both of us speak a little French,
+and we might try it that way. I think I could explain better in French.
+Why, even little children, tiny girls, sing _Auprès de ma blonde_
+in France, and think nothing of it. It’s just a nice, wholesome
+idea—_auprès de ma blonde_—and it sounds like poetry—but take it in
+English and what do you get?”
+
+“‘Quite close to my blonde’ ...” answered his wife.
+
+“... ‘_Qu’il fait bon dormir_,’” her husband hurried on.
+
+“‘How good it is to sleep,’” she translated.
+
+“Fine! Now you’re talking.”
+
+“Go on,” she said, “_you’re_ talking.”
+
+“Well, all right, but first I wanted you to see that there is no reason
+to get embarrassed, because everything is lovely in French. So don’t
+mind my frankness.”
+
+“I don’t,” said the bride.
+
+“All right,” he began again, “_Alors_, now, _il y a quelque chose que
+vous avez que je n’en ai pas, n’est-ce pas?_”
+
+“_Oui_,” she said.
+
+“_Bon_,” he said. “_Alors, ça c’est naturel—ah—ça c’est bien
+naturel...._”
+
+“_Par exemple_,” put in his wife, a little illogically.
+
+“_Dites_,” he said, and after a great pause, “_Dites donc—dites vous_——”
+
+“You should really use ‘tu’ and ‘toi’ and not ‘vous,’” said his wife;
+“it’s more intimate.”
+
+“All right,” he responded. “Now, _tu as quelque chose, tu as ... toi_.”
+
+“_Comment?_” she demanded.
+
+“I just don’t know enough words,” said the bridegroom, wretchedly. The
+bride put her hand on his arm.
+
+“Let’s try ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ in English,” she suggested.
+
+[Illustration: _DR. KARL ZANER._]
+
+“That’s not a bad idea,” he said. “Well, all right. Now thee has——”
+
+“Hath,” she corrected.
+
+“Thee hath certain—ah——”
+
+“Differences,” she supplied. “But isn’t it ‘thou hath’—or is it ‘thee
+hath’?”
+
+“To hell with it!” cried her husband. “In all thy life hast never been
+around, for Pete’s sake?”
+
+“Certainly, and thou—and you have no right to talk to me like that!”
+
+“I’m _sorry_,” said the young man. “_I’m_ sorry.” He rose to his feet.
+“Ye gods! to think this had to happen to me! Ah, well. Listen. I tell
+you what, I’ll write it out for you. How about that? And if you don’t
+like the idea, why, all right, I suppose.”
+
+It was the next day that the young husband, who had sat up all night
+in the hotel lobby, thinking and writing, visited Dr. Tithridge. I am
+happy to report that, as not infrequently happens in such cases, a
+solution was finally arrived at. However, in a great number of cases
+the difficulty is never overcome. The home becomes a curious sort of
+hybrid, with overtones of the botanical garden and the aviary. The
+husband grows morose and snappish, the wife cross and pettish. Very
+often she takes up lacrosse and he goes in for raising rabbits. If
+allowed to go on, the situation can become so involved and intricate
+that not all the analysts from the time of Joan of Arc down could
+unravel it.
+
+The problem is by no means any simpler where the wife is cognizant of
+things as they are and the husband is ignorant. I know of one young man
+who every night tenderly placed, with much strange clucking, a basket
+near the hearth into which he had some expectation that a baby would
+be deposited by a stork. (Plate I.) Another young husband constructed
+at considerable expense a water-lily pond in his back yard and fondly
+rowed about in it, twilight after twilight, searching for infants,
+laying his finger to his lip, making “tchk, tchk” noises at his wife,
+who watched him in profound amazement.
+
+[Illustration: _EMOTIONAL CHARADES. PLATE I._
+
+“_One young man every night tenderly placed, with much strange
+clucking, a basket near the hearth into which he had some expectation
+that a baby would be deposited by a stork._”]
+
+In both these cases the wives were fine women of strong character, with
+a background of sturdy pioneer stock, and they soon put a stop to such
+charades, once they divined the curiously entangled Wish Motives behind
+them. It may be said, indeed, that young wives are more candid and
+direct in their explanations of natural phenomena than young husbands,
+when they have to be.
+
+The existence of such deplorable ignorance is a sad commentary on the
+sentimentality of a nation which sets itself up to be frankly sexual.
+There is much reason to be hopeful, however. The future parents of the
+land will doubtless come straight to the point in matters of this sort,
+when talking with their children. The children of today will be the
+parents of tomorrow, and you know how the children of today are.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+WHAT SHOULD CHILDREN TELL PARENTS?
+
+
+So many children have come to me and said, “What shall I tell my
+parents about sex?” My answer is always the same: “Tell them the
+truth. If the subject is approached in a tactful way, it should be no
+more embarrassing to teach a parent about sex than to teach him about
+personal pronouns. And it should be less discouraging.”
+
+In discussing sex enlightenment for parents, first of all, definitions
+are needed. What do we mean by “parents”? Do we mean all adults who
+have had children? Do we mean adults who have had children, they knew
+not why? Or do we mean married people who have given birth to one or
+more offspring but have never gone into the matter very thoroughly? For
+the purposes of this article, it will be assumed that by “parents” we
+mean all adult persons permeated with a strong sense of indecency.
+
+I have talked with hundreds of children about the problem of educating
+their parents along sex lines. So many of them have told me that
+they honestly tried to give their elders the benefit of their rich
+experience in life, but that the parents usually grew flushed and red
+and would reply, “Nice people don’t talk about such things.” It is true
+that a great gap exists between generations. The fact that children
+are embarrassed to have their parents along when they are attending
+certain movies or plays is indicative of how hard it is to overcome
+the old fear of allowing one’s elders to learn anything. A child never
+knows at what point in a play his uninformed old father will start to
+giggle. It is hard for children to break through and really come in
+touch with their elders. “Nice people don’t talk about such things!”
+is the defense which old people put up against life itself, when they
+feel it crowding in all around their heads. Parents hesitate to discuss
+things calmly and intelligently with their children for two reasons:
+first, they have a kind of dread of learning something they don’t want
+to know; and second, they feel that if they must learn anything at all
+they would like to be spared the humiliation of learning it from their
+offspring. Actually, middle age (and even senescence) is marked by a
+great curiosity about life. There is a feeling that life is slipping
+away quickly, and that it would be terrible to have the end come before
+everything in life has been revealed. The beauty of life, always
+apparent, implies a mystery which is disturbing right up to the bitter
+end. The spectacle of old men wistfully attending sex lectures (as they
+frequently do) suggests that the strong suspicion exists in them that
+somewhere they will hear the magic word by which human affairs will
+become clarified, somewhere they will glimpse the ultimate ecstasy.
+Children who allow their fathers and mothers, to whom they owe their
+very existence, to go on wondering about sex, are derelicts to duty.
+
+[Illustration: “_One’s father and mother are never too old to be told
+facts._”]
+
+If young folks lack the tact or intelligence requisite to enlightening
+their parents, the task should be intrusted to some one else. Yet it
+is hard to say to whom. A child should think twice before sending his
+father around to public school to secure sex information from his
+teacher. Women teachers, to borrow a phrase, are apt to be “emotionally
+illiterate.” Many teachers have had no sex life and are just waiting
+for somebody like your father to show up.
+
+One’s father and mother are never too old to be told facts. Indeed, it
+is most unkind to keep them in ignorance and allow them to nourish the
+doubts and horrors of their imagination. The majority of parents pick
+up their knowledge of the facts of life from smoking-car conversations,
+bridge-club teas, and after-dinner speakers. They receive it from their
+vicious adult companions who are only slightly less ignorant than they
+are and who give them a hopelessly garbled version. They pick it up,
+too, from the gutter.
+
+[Illustration: _Fig. 7. It is customary to illustrate sexology chapters
+with a cross section of the human body. The authors have chosen to
+substitute in its place a chart of the North Atlantic, showing airplane
+routes. The authors realize that this will be of no help to the sex
+novice, but neither is a cross section of the human body._]
+
+This matter of picking up information from the gutter is an interesting
+topic in itself. Quite the most remarkable case history that has come
+to my notice is that of François Delamater, a parent thirty years of
+age, who went deliberately to the gutter for his sex education. He
+had heard, as all people do hear some time or other, that sex can be
+learned from the gutter, so he set out to make a comprehensive survey
+of the gutters of eighteen large American cities. For a long time he
+found out nothing, although he was a very curious man. By a peculiar
+piece of fortune, however, he happened to be walking in Cincinnati
+one day and met a man who was leading a tame stork. The man was in
+the gutter. The stork carried in its bill a live baby, in swaddling
+clothes. Smelling a rat, Mr. Delamater stopped the man and inquired
+where the baby came from. The man replied that he didn’t know.
+
+“For that matter,” continued Mr. Delamater, “where does _any_ baby come
+from?”
+
+The man shook his head. Then he relented and told Mr. Delamater that he
+had merely been hired to lead the stork around the streets to advertise
+a moving picture called “Her Husband’s First-born.” The whole incident
+so confused the mind of the thirty-year-old parent that he eventually
+evolved the strange theory that babies are born within the father, an
+erroneous notion that dwarfed his emotions and modified his character.
+
+It is of the utmost importance, in imparting sex knowledge to one’s
+parents that it be done in such a way as not to engender fear or
+anxiety. The phraseology should be chosen carefully, and efforts
+should be made to explain everything clearly but without the use of
+words which have a tendency to make old people nervous. The word
+“erotic” is such a word. When it is necessary to speak of Man’s erotic
+tendencies, it is best to substitute another word. In the first place,
+an overwhelming majority of parents do not know the exact meaning of
+the word “erotic,” and to know an _in_exact meaning is worse than
+nothing. Many are apt to confuse it vaguely with “exotic.” I have known
+parents to go through whole books by authors like Havelock Ellis or
+Mary Ware Dennett without understanding a single paragraph, because
+they thought Man’s “eroticism” referred to his desire to be in some
+foreign place like Spain. Those parents that actually do detect the
+difference between the sound of the two words will immediately become
+nervous, inattentive, and dispirited. They will make some excuse to
+leave the room, and will wander out, probably to the ice-box to get
+themselves a cold snack, which they will eat while in a sulky frame
+of mind. Later they will look up the word in the dictionary, but will
+forget it by the time they hear it again in conversation or read it in
+print. Furthermore, all their taste for sex will be gone.
+
+Just what to tell parents is, of course, a vital question, not to be
+answered dogmatically. Before a child can conscientiously approach such
+subjects as pedestalism, the recessive knee, begonia-ism, frigidity in
+men, birth control, sublimation, and the swastika fixation, he must
+clear the boards. The simple phases of sex should be imparted in a
+direct manner: it is best to explain things in a matter-of-fact way,
+rather than resort to such cloudy analogies as birds and flowers.
+Strange to say, the habits of birds and flowers have done as little
+to clarify the human scene as almost any other two manifestations
+in nature. Further, there is always the danger, in setting up plant
+or animal life as an example, that one’s parents will place a
+literal interpretation on things. I am thinking particularly of the
+case—which all sociological students know about—of Nina Sembrich, the
+fifteen-year-old high-school girl who attempted to impart knowledge
+to her father by telling him about bees. (Nina’s mother was dead, or
+she would have told her too.) She traced, in rather minute detail,
+the renascence of earth in spring, the blossoming of the trees, the
+activity of the bees and their function in distributing the pollen, the
+fertilization of the seed and its growth during the warm languorous
+summer days, finally the fruition and harvest.
+
+[Illustration: “_Strange to say, the habits of birds and flowers have
+done as little to clarify the human scene as almost any other two
+manifestations in nature._”]
+
+It was a beautiful story, redolent of orchards and sunny hillsides,
+instinct with life—a story that had a soporific effect on Mr. Sembrich,
+lulling him as the buzz of a bee lulls one in hot daisy fields. The
+upshot of it was that he gathered a rather strange impression from
+the narrative and somehow got the idea that to have babies you had
+to keep bees. He bought several hives, installing them in the little
+sitting-room on the second floor, where Mrs. Sembrich had kept her
+sewing-machine when she was alive. The acquisition of the apiary
+further complicated matters for Mr. Sembrich by reason of the fact that
+bees themselves enjoy a rather extraordinary sexual scheme—theirs is
+a complex society, infinitely more diverting and harder to understand
+than our own. Observed by a slightly nervous person who is trying to
+profit by a simple analogy—as Mr. Sembrich was—bees are capable of
+causing the utmost confusion.
+
+If you will recall what you know about bees, you will readily
+understand what I mean. In a colony of bees, certain individuals have
+no sex whatsoever; these are the “workers.” The male bees are “drones.”
+The queen (or “mother”) bee develops her sexual character only after
+being arbitrarily chosen for the purpose, walled up, and fattened on
+special food. Mr. Sembrich marveled at these things.
+
+Basing his hopes entirely on what he had seen, he made his first overt
+act, which was to give up his business (he was a merchant tailor) on
+the assumption that to be endowed with masculine characteristics one
+had to be a drone. In this, of course, he was justified to some degree;
+for it is quite true that very busy men rarely are fully equipped for
+a complete or happy sex life. Business men commonly find a vicarious
+gratification for their erotic nature in card index systems. Often,
+their satiable appetite for life is dissipated in the process of
+dictating a single sales letter. Only men who devote virtually their
+entire attention to love ever glimpse its full glory or experience its
+bewildering intensity. (And _they_ make so little money they might just
+as well not.)
+
+Mr. Sembrich, therefore, was not without justification in becoming a
+drone, since life was what he wanted to find out about. But it was when
+he undertook to fatten up a lady of his acquaintance into a “mother”
+that he ran into difficulties. He locked her in the kitchen and plied
+her with rich desserts. He even urged honey on her—a rather literal
+expedient even for a man in his mental condition. The lady not only
+failed to become a mother, but she took sick and died, surrounded by
+a group of Mr. Sembrich’s “workers,” whom he had hired to help feed
+her. With a dead woman in the kitchen and a lot of bees upstairs in the
+sitting-room, the household became unbearable as a place to live and
+bring up his daughter Nina, so Mr. Sembrich fled, still ignorant of the
+essential knowledge of life.[17]
+
+[17] Sexually speaking.
+
+Another case, not exactly paralleling the Sembrich affair, is the case
+of two parents who failed to learn something to their advantage because
+they happened to be at dinner. It happened this way. Charles Updegraff
+had sent his son, Junior, to spend the summer at a boys’ camp. There,
+in addition to learning how to swim, paddle, and make fires, Junior
+learned about sex, so that he returned home fine and brown and a credit
+to the Updegraffs. (The Updegraffs had swum, paddled, made fires, and
+so on, for generations.) Now, at Camp Whortleberry (that was the name
+of the camp) the authorities had adopted what is known as the “pet
+method” for imparting sex knowledge to the boys. Each boy was given
+charge of a pet of some kind, and the pets were given _carte blanche_.
+Junior Updegraff drew a pair of sunfish. To augment the actual pet
+study, the boys were also given lectures by the camp director, who knew
+in a general way what he was talking about. Thus, when the summer was
+over the boys’ minds were full of a strange assortment of facts and
+oddments, some of them rather amusing. Young Junior had hardly been
+home an hour when he thought he would do his old man a good turn by
+telling him what he knew about sunfish. The Updegraffs were at table.
+
+[Illustration: _Sun fish (Mola-Mola)_]
+
+“Pop,” he said, “do you want the low down on a sunfish?”
+
+Mrs. Updegraff hastily interrupted. “Better wait till after dinner,
+son,” she said.
+
+[Illustration: “_Young Junior had hardly been home an hour when he
+thought he would do his old man a good turn by telling him what he knew
+about sunfish._”]
+
+(Note: parents have always been held back by the superstitious idea
+that it is wrong to learn anything while eating.)
+
+“What’s the matter with right now?” asked Junior. “I was just going to
+tell Pop about our pet study course. I know a lot of things.”
+
+“Wait till we’re through eating,” said Mrs. Updegraff.
+
+“Why should I? A mouse is an embryo twenty days, a lop-sided apple is
+that way because it’s been fertilized only on one side, male animals
+grow bright colored in the mating season, and so it goes. Sunfish....”
+
+[Illustration: _Sea Rover_]
+
+“Junior!” said Mrs. Updegraff, sharply. “Not till after dinner. Sunfish
+can wait!”
+
+“No they can’t!” cried Junior, warming up to his subject. “The father
+sunfish makes the nest, then....”
+
+“We don’t want to hear about it,” snapped Junior’s mother. “Tell us
+about your canoe trips.”
+
+“I never went on no canoe trips.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Always was watching the sunfish.”
+
+The matter was dropped and the meal continued in silence. After dinner
+Mr. Updegraff, secretly very much interested, hung around in the hope
+that his son would again open up the subject of sunfish. The boy never
+did. He was only a child and children are easily discouraged.
+
+I suspect that the church is responsible, in large measure, for the
+ideas of life now held by adults. Sex is still sin to the evangelical
+clergy. A kiss is thinkable only when sanctified by the church. A child
+who permits his parents to continue in the belief that the elevation of
+the soul depends on the renunciation of the flesh, is hardly doing his
+duty by them. Sometimes it may be advisable to quote to your parents
+from standard works on the subject of sex. Great care must be taken,
+though, to avoid abruptness, as far as possible. Thus there is some
+doubt in my mind whether a child ought to approach its mother on a
+hot afternoon when she is tired and bedraggled, and say to her: “Ma,
+under favorable conditions a husband and wife should remain sexually
+attractive to each other during the whole period of their sexual
+potency.”
+
+That’s no way for a child to talk.
+
+Some children have told me that instead of quoting from books they have
+tried leaving the books lying around, opened at pertinent pages. Even
+this failed to work in most cases. The mothers usually just picked up
+the book, dusted it, closed it, and fitted it neatly in some nearby
+shelf. They thought it was dusty.
+
+[Illustration: _Sea rover_]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CLAUSTROPHOBIA, OR WHAT EVERY YOUNG WIFE SHOULD KNOW
+
+
+There is an erroneous impression current nowadays that sex is
+everything. It is similar to the psychological delusion common
+during the war years that the war would never end. Man is inclined
+to exaggerate the immensity of his chief preoccupation. Thus when
+the World War was in progress, men convinced themselves that there
+would never be anything else but war. Then the war ended, and Man
+was left, as it were, stranded. Used to a tremendous preoccupation,
+he had to have another. He turned to sex, out of sheer momentum, and
+overestimated its importance as he had magnified the immensity of war.
+
+Sex is by no means everything. It varies, as a matter of fact, from
+only as high as 78 per cent of everything to as low as 3.10 per cent.
+The norm, in a sane, healthy person, should be between 18 and 24 per
+cent. In these hectic days, however, it is not unusual to hear even
+intelligent persons say, or imply, that sex is everything. This, of
+course, leads to the mistaken idea that a couple who are, so to speak,
+emotionally compatible, are going to be compatible in every other way.
+“Take care of sex, and the details will look after themselves,” is the
+rule, in a manner of speaking. Nothing could be more stupid. A man and
+woman may be very, very happy emotionally and not get anywhere at all.
+There are many reasons for this, but none is more important than the
+inability of many a husband, otherwise normal, to become adjusted to a
+lack of freedom. Freedom is as essential and as primary an urge with a
+man as the loss of it is with a woman. A man grows up with the desire
+to be free and unfettered. The boy of six wants to play outside the
+house all the time. He doesn’t even want to come into the house for his
+meals. On the other hand, little girls like to be in the house as much
+as they can. When dusk falls, the little boys are restless under the
+urge to be several blocks away, playing Go, Sheepy, Go, but the little
+girls want to be home putting their dolls to bed. Usually at least one
+of the dolls is ill and needs constant attention. Often it is necessary
+to force little girls to go outside and get some air and exercise, just
+as it is frequently necessary to use force to get little boys _into_
+the house. And even when girls do go outdoors, they have to be watched
+like a hawk or they will be playing house in the dog box or under the
+cellar door.
+
+And yet, in spite of all this, women marry men without giving the
+serious chasm between their essential natures a thought. They think
+that a man wants a home. Well, he does, in a vague sort of way. Not so
+much a home, however, as a house. He likes to be able to say where he
+lives when he goes to vote, and things like that. But he doesn’t want
+a home in the sense that a woman does, to potter around in. He has
+neither the same urge nor the same talent for hanging pictures and
+rearranging furniture. A woman, no matter how opposed she may become to
+housework, still gets a small thrill out of shifting things. It never
+wears off. She may be too tired to cook and insist on going out to
+dinner, but before she goes she would be willing, nay, glad, to put the
+Victrola where the davenport is and move the davenport over in front
+of the fireplace. One simple move like that is enough to alarm a man
+sufficiently to serve as the onset of a serious psychological or mental
+disturbance. Men don’t stop to reason about individual moves. As soon
+as a woman calls on her husband to help her change the position of a
+couple of pieces of furniture, he instantly thinks the house is going
+to be torn up, as it was last spring, with carpets rolled up in the
+hall, and stepladders and buckets everywhere. This gives him a strange
+“boxed-in” feeling. If that feeling recurs too often, the husband may
+get claustrophobia. Claustrophobia is “a dread of being in an enclosed
+space, of living under conditions which would interfere with a speedy
+escape into the open.”
+
+Every young wife should know the first symptoms of claustrophobia,
+because, if taken in time, it can be cured, but if allowed to run on,
+deterioration sets in and may result in anything from benign stupor
+to complete paranoia. Once a husband gets into the outer rim of the
+paranoid and paranoic psychoses, he may easily run through all of
+them, and in the end simply be no good at all. The first symptoms
+are usually innocuous enough, and may consist of nothing more than
+a mere Amplification of Personality Without Signs of Conflict. (The
+symptoms listed herein are largely selected from Claudé’s table.) But
+from there it is an easy step up to and including Logical Development
+of Delusions upon False Premises, Fragmentation of Personality,
+Dissimulation of Egocentricity, Looseness of Systematization,
+Exaggerated Feelings of Prejudice, Polymorphic Delusions, Ingenious
+Methods of Defense, Reticence, Recourse to Legal Measures, Apathy,
+Writing Letters to the Newspapers, and, finally, Diminution, or Total
+Loss, of Neuro-Vegetative Reflexes. There is nothing sadder than the
+spectacle of a once strong, firm-minded man no longer master of his
+neuro-vegetative reflexes, to say nothing of a hitherto well-integrated
+fellow in the throes of Fragmentation.
+
+
+AVOIDING THIS SAD STATE
+
+There are various simple ways to avoid this sad state of affairs. Of
+course, where a husband and wife have plenty of money to begin with,
+and servants take care of all the details of household management,
+there is very little danger of claustrophobia. (There is always danger,
+even with money and servants, of dual personality, melancholia, and
+automatic writing, but not of claustrophobia.) In wealthy marriages,
+which are usually made for either financial or social reasons, the
+husband and wife see little, if anything, of each other, and the
+husband need have no fear of being boxed in at all. He is free to
+come and go at any time. But I am dealing with the typical American
+marriage, in which the wife runs her own home—builds it up around her
+husband—either because she has to, or because she wants to. A woman’s
+desire to potter about her own home goes back a long way, so far back
+that the urge often remains when economic necessity no longer exists.
+Women like to do their own work. They even build up ingenious excuses
+for doing it, such as claiming that the maid or the handy man didn’t
+do it right. This desire may not last for longer than the first three
+or four weeks of marriage, but that is ample time for the onset of
+claustrophobia. During that period a wife will concentrate on buying
+kitchen ware, painting chairs, selecting silver patterns, building
+bookshelves, etc., to the complete exclusion of everything else in
+life. The young husband, hearing all this tinkling and rattling and
+shoving going on around him, smelling paint, listening to hammering,
+etc., will begin at once to have a fear of being trapped or “caught.”
+He will strive to get out of the house, and his wife should allow him
+to go. What she almost invariably does, however, is to stop him and ask
+him to hold a piece of chintz or toile de jouy up over the mantel so
+that she can see whether she likes it there. She won’t like it there,
+and he then has to hold it, first high, then low, then in between,
+over a table in another part of the room. When this point is settled,
+he will likely be asked to hang a few pictures. Now a curious thing
+happens to many sensitive husbands when they are hanging pictures or
+holding things against walls. They get the impression that the walls
+are being made thicker, for the purpose of making it harder for them
+to get out—interfering with a speedy escape into the open. This is
+usually the beginning of the most dangerous of all hallucinations in
+claustrophobia cases—the Persecution Complex. The husband feels that
+he is not only being boxed in, but persecuted. If deterioration is
+allowed to set in, the delusion of persecution may attain astounding
+proportions, such as that the Masons or the Pianomakers are against
+him, or that former Vice President Charles G. Dawes is trying to
+“get” him. A case history will show how this happens.
+
+[Illustration: “_He will strive to get out of the house, and his wife
+should allow him to go._”]
+
+Case No. 22. _Personal History._ Normal birth and development. Born
+June 14, 1894. Had the usual childhood diseases with no sequelæ. No
+serious accidents or operations. Patient began school at the age of
+six, got along very well, graduating from high school at 18. Graduated
+from college at 22, and became an architect. He always held good
+positions with good salaries. Considered capable and efficient. Habits
+normal. Everything normal. Case married when he was 29.
+
+_General Make-up._ Always considered keen, intelligent, amiable, and
+trusting. Liked outdoor activities, something of an athlete, with a
+strong urge to “get away by himself.” Began to be suspicious shortly
+after his marriage. He frequently showed this suspicion in his work by
+complaining to his associates that his ability was not recognized, and
+intimating that he thought the elevators in the building had purposely
+quit stopping for him, so that he could not get out. Nervous. Jumpy.
+
+_Mental Examination._ Patient was very keen, alert, but suspicious when
+brought under observation. His demeanor was self-assertive, but he was
+inclined to be anxious and restless. He demanded his immediate freedom
+of the physicians who were examining him, and was greatly frightened.
+“Let’s get out of here!” he kept repeating to the doctors. He was
+allowed to depart, commitment to an institution not being thought
+necessary on the occasion of this first examination. Later the patient
+became violent. Would jump up from dinner table and cry, “Let’s get out
+of this!”
+
+[Illustration: _Onset of the boxed-in feeling._]
+
+_Causation._ When examined for causation, the patient at first talked
+guardedly, and then incoherently. “Look out for the water!” he would
+say, and, again, “You can’t get out that way!” His physicians, unable
+to correlate his statements and his apprehensions, called in Dr. Damon
+Prill, the eminent New York psycho-analyst. “What have we here?” said
+Dr. Prill. “Patient,” explained one of the doctors. “Look out for
+the water!” cried the patient. “Where did the water come from?” asked
+Dr. Prill, quietly. “From the drip-pan under the refrigerator,” said
+the patient. “Ah yes,” said Dr. Prill. “You can’t get out that way!”
+cried the case. “Now, why is it that we can’t get out that way?” asked
+Dr. Prill. “Because we are painted in,” said the patient. “Painted
+in, eh?” asked Dr. Prill. “You heard me,” said the patient. “Painted
+in, hammered in, pictured in, davenported in”—here he made a strange
+twisting gesture with both hands, leaned forward, and ended, in a
+confidential whisper—“rolled up in a rug!”
+
+The reiteration of these incoherencies was all that Prill could get out
+of the patient, but it was enough to persuade him to question the man’s
+wife. He made some interesting discoveries. It turned out that the
+wife, one day, had asked her husband to keep his eye on the pan under
+the refrigerator and see that the water did not overflow, while she
+went to a bridge tea. The husband was home, going over some important
+plans. He forgot the pan and the place was flooded. The ceiling in the
+apartment below fell. The woman in the apartment below went all to
+pieces. The patient’s wife, returning from her tea, went all to pieces.
+The patient went all to pieces. Thus the hallucination formulated in
+his mind that being married and living in a house necessitated going
+to pieces. As for being “rolled up in a rug,” that, it transpired, had
+actually happened to him also. One day, during a thorough cleaning of
+the house, which his wife was superintending, she ordered two burly
+men to roll up a rug, without noticing that her husband was on it at
+the time. He was accordingly rolled up in it and had considerable
+difficulty getting out. As for being “painted in,” Prill established
+that the husband was also actually painted in on one occasion. He was
+in the bathroom shaving, and his wife did not know it. Thus she had
+a man paint the floors outside the bathroom, and when the husband
+opened the door to emerge, he couldn’t get out without stepping on the
+paint. He was about to step on the paint, anyway, when his wife saw
+him. “Here, here!” she said, “you can’t get out that way!” There was
+no other way out. “You’ll simply have to stay in there till the paint
+dries,” his wife told him, and he did.
+
+Prill explained to the wife what these inhibitions had done to her
+husband and that his condition was precarious. He stressed the
+importance of allowing her husband his freedom at all times, paint
+or no paint. The husband was then brought back into the home and was
+allowed to live a free, unfettered existence, coming and going as he
+pleased—always, however, under the discreet surveillance of Dr. Prill.
+With that perspicacity of psycho-mental cases, however, that almost
+second sight, the patient became aware that some one was snooping
+around, watching him, and one night he leaped out of bed, pulled open
+the door of a little-used closet, and there was Dr. Prill watching. The
+patient, who otherwise might have been cured, went instantly into the
+last stages of the Persecution Complex.[18]
+
+[18] This discovery of Dr. Prill in the closet is one of the few blots
+on the splendid record of psycho-analysis, and is most unfortunate.
+
+[Illustration: _Fig. 14._ _Here we have that strange, alert furtiveness
+which instantly overtakes a man when he beholds a woman doing something
+which he does not thoroughly understand._]
+
+The husband-patient began with the idea that he was being persecuted by
+the Detective Bureau of the Police Department and gradually enlarged
+his Apprehension Field until he believed he was also being persecuted
+by the Navy, the towns of Indianapolis and St. Louis, and the Box
+Manufacturers’ Association. He whispered to doctors that a bearded
+man,[19] representing the Box Manufacturers, was following him around
+with a box and trying to catch him. Partly to avoid this imaginary
+menace, and also partly to stay off imaginary paint, the patient no
+longer walked on the floor, but on table tops, mantels, and so on,
+leaping around the room like an oriole. Unless watched, he would jump
+for the window-sills, and try to get out. He wrote to the Department
+of Justice at Washington, and finally to the President of the United
+States, protesting against the activities of the Order of the Eastern
+Star, the Railway Y. M. C. A., a Rev. W——, and the _New York Times_.
+The case was decreed hopeless in 1926. Later, the wife got a divorce
+and the husband seemed to improve. He was permitted to go to a ranch in
+Dakota, where he had a horse, a dog, and a pipe and was allowed to come
+and go as he liked. The last time I saw the patient, he was completely
+cured.
+
+[19] Dr. Prill wore a small, black beard.
+
+
+PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR FEARS
+
+Prevention of the nuclear fears which lead to such cases of
+claustrophobia should be quite simple. A wife should strive at all
+times to give her husband at least the _illusion_ that he is free to
+come and go. She should remember that it is the little things that
+count, that claustrophobia is brought on by an accumulation of small
+details, that it is, in fact, a tragedy of the trivial. If a husband
+uses a guest towel, he should be quietly reprimanded, but under no
+circumstances sent to his room. After pointing out, briefly, that the
+guest towels are not to be used, the wife might even give him a piece
+of bread and butter with sugar on it, or a kind word. Too many wives
+do not consider it important to explain the facts of the guest towel
+to their husbands. A wife expects her husband to pick up his knowledge
+in the gutter or from other husbands, who know as little about the
+actual truth as he does himself. If a husband uses a guest towel, he
+should be gently reproved and then told where guest towels come
+from, in clear, simple language. The wife should lead him to the drawer
+where she keeps the guest towels and show him wherein they differ
+from ordinary towels—the kind he may use. The average guest towel
+can be identified by curious markings, either elaborate initials or
+picturesque designs in one corner or running all the way around the
+border. The husband should also be told that the use of such towels is
+not pleasurable, because of the discomfort caused by the hemstitching,
+the rough embroidery, and the like. He should be made to understand
+that no man ever uses a guest towel, either in his own home or when he
+is a guest somewhere else, that they are hung up for lady guests to
+look at and are not to be disturbed. If he is told these simple truths
+in a calm, unexcited way, the chances are that he will never use a
+guest towel again and that he won’t worry unduly over the consequences
+of his having used one once or twice. But as soon as he is given
+the idea that he has done something terrible, that old feeling of
+being boxed in comes over him. He begins to think that he will never
+do anything right around the house, and that his home is merely a
+laboratory in which he has been trapped for the purpose of serving as
+the subject of strange experiments with towels and furniture.
+
+[Illustration: _A wife should tell her husband in clear, simple
+language where guest towels come from._]
+
+The same rules should apply to husbands when they leave things lying
+around, or track in dirt, or forget to shut the refrigerator door.
+None of these faults is, after all, of very great importance, and they
+should be lightly dismissed. If they are presented as heinous crimes,
+the husband is going to be liable to the inception of a Persecution
+Complex and the slow deterioration of mind and spirit incident upon
+claustrophobia. A wife is forever taking it for granted that her
+husband should know as much about a household as she does. If she would
+only realize that things which are easy and uncomplicated to her are
+strange and mysterious to her husband, and explain the mysteries to
+him, adjustments could be arrived at very simply, and sex would then
+have a chance to mean something. As an instance of what I mean take
+what happens during the average unpacking. A couple has just moved from
+one house to another, say, and the husband has been asked to help put
+things away. (He should not, of course, be asked, for the danger of
+that boxed-in feeling, with all of its awful consequences, is inherent
+in such a request.) As the things are taken out of trunks, the wife
+knows instantly where they go, not only the things she is going to use
+and wants put where she can get at them, but the things for which she
+has no immediate use and wishes stored away for the winter or summer,
+as the case may be. A woman can tell instantly whether a given article
+belongs in the attic or in the basement. All objects fall into one
+or the other of these two categories. For example, while I myself am
+not an expert at it, I am aware that anything framed or having wire
+attached to it goes to the attic, and that most containers and the
+like, especially those made of metal, go to the basement. A woman
+comes naturally by this ability to discriminate. She knows most of
+it by intuition and the rest she has learned from her mother. But
+to suppose that a husband should know, offhand, whether a chest of
+drawers with woolens or dimity in it goes to the attic or the basement
+is ridiculous. You might as well expect him to understand, without
+long, careful instruction, why one tea towel is used for the china and
+another for the glassware. The thing for a wife to do, then, is not to
+upbraid or rebuff her husband when she finds him tired and worn in the
+attic, sitting among a lot of things that should have been taken to the
+basement, but simply to say nothing, or, better yet, compliment him on
+his strength and agility and then, next day, hire a handy man to shift
+the things to where they belong. Adherence to a few simple rules of
+solicitude and understanding would prevent nine husbands out of ten, no
+matter how passionately dedicated to liberty they may be, from falling
+victims to the dread claustrophobia which every year takes its heavy
+toll of male minds as the result of the carelessness or stupidity of
+wives.
+
+[Illustration: (Sketch of child, man, and woman. Man has a downcast
+posture.)]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+FRIGIDITY IN MEN
+
+
+I hesitate to approach the subject of male unresponsiveness. Frigidity
+in men is a theme sociologists have avoided. Frigidity in women, on the
+other hand, forms a vast chapter in the sex research of today; the part
+it plays in marital discord is known to students of sociology as well
+as to the lay reader, although probably less well. It has occupied the
+attention of many noted writers, and has taken the lives of such men as
+Zaner and Tithridge, who carried some of their experiments too far.[20]
+
+[20] Tithridge especially.
+
+Any discussion of frigidity in men calls for an unusual degree of
+frankness on the part of the writer, since it entails such factors
+as the “recessive knee,” Fuller’s retort, and the declination of the
+kiss. Further, before attacking this subject, it will be necessary
+to reëvaluate some of the more fundamental hypotheses of Man’s erotic
+nature, and what a nuisance that is going to be!
+
+Let us go back a little way. There are two fundamental urges in nature:
+the desire to eat and the desire to reproduce one’s kind. Which of
+these two impulses is the stronger depends somewhat on the individual
+and somewhat on the circumstances surrounding the individual—that is,
+it is apt to vary with the quality of the food and of the women. There
+are, Zaner shows, men who would rather eat than reproduce, and there
+are isolated cases of men who would rather reproduce than eat. But it
+is the less simple types that provide the important case histories for
+the student of masculine frigidity, and no broad conclusions can be
+drawn about the relative merits of eating and reproducing without a
+consideration of the contributing factors.
+
+Quite regardless of which urge comes first in Man’s scheme of
+existence, it is safe to state dogmatically that the second urge
+(the “sex” urge) has caused more stir in the last few years than the
+first, or “nourishment,” urge. Sex is less than fifty years old, yet
+it has upset the whole Western World. The sublimation of sex, called
+Love, is of course much older—although many purists will question
+the existence of Love prior to about 1885 on the grounds that there
+can be no sublimation of a non-existent feeling. What I shall try to
+show, without carping, will be that there is a very good reason why
+the erotic side of Man has called forth so much more discussion lately
+than has his appetite for food. The reason is this: that while the
+urge to eat is a personal matter which concerns no one but the person
+hungry (or, as the German has it, _der hungrige Mensch_), the sex urge
+involves, for its true expression, another individual. It is this
+“other individual” that causes all the trouble.
+
+[Illustration: “_Just the minute another person is drawn into some
+one’s life, there begin to arise undreamed-of complexities._”]
+
+Except in rare instances, all of which have been dealt with by Sumner,
+the urge involves an individual of the opposite sex; that is, for a
+man it involves a woman, and for a woman it involves a man. I use the
+word “involve” advisedly. _Just the minute another person is drawn
+into some one’s life, there begin to arise undreamed-of complexities_,
+and from such a simple beginning as sexual desire we find built up
+such alarming yet familiar phenomena as _fêtes_, _divertissements_,
+telephone conversations, arrangements, plans, sacrifices, train
+arrivals, meetings, appointments, tardinesses, delays, marriages,
+dinners, small pets and animals, calumny, children, music lessons,
+yellow shades for the windows, evasions, lethargy, cigarettes,
+candies, repetition of stories and anecdotes, infidelity, ineptitude,
+incompatibility, bronchial trouble, and many others, all of which are
+entirely foreign to the original urge and way off the subject, and all
+of which make the person’s existence so strangely bewildering that if
+he could have foreseen these developments his choice would have been
+the “eating” urge, and he would have just gone quietly out somewhere
+and ordered himself a steak and some French fried potatoes as being the
+easier way out.
+
+Still, that is just a hypothetical alternative. Life, as we know, is
+very insistent; almost daily people become involved with other people.
+And that brings us to our real theme, namely, frigidity in men.
+
+_The Recessive Knee._ The first symptom of frigidity in men is what
+I call the recessive knee. To the study of this phenomenon I have
+given some of my best years. My laboratory has been the laboratory
+of life itself. Probably I would never have discovered the recessive
+knee had I not noticed it, some ten years ago, in myself. Questioning
+my colleagues, I found to my amazement that they too had had similar
+experiences which they were unable to account for, and this led me
+to continue my investigations. Since then I have gone into taxicabs,
+terminal lunch rooms, boat liveries, and all other places where it
+is possible or usual for a girl to let her knee rest lightly against
+that of her companion, have gained the confidence of the young men
+and women whom I was watching, and have accumulated a mass of data
+showing that frigidity in men, instead of being almost a non-existent
+characteristic, is one of the commonest attributes of our national
+sexual life. Inasmuch as the juxtaposing of the knee by the female,
+which causes the recessive (or “pulled away”) knee in the male, usually
+occurs fairly soon after dinner, my experiments and observations have
+had to be made largely in the evening. It has been my custom to sleep
+late mornings to make up for this.
+
+[Illustration: “_Occasions arise sometimes when a girl presses her
+knee, ever so gently, against the knee of the young man she is out
+with._”]
+
+Simply stated, the knee phenomenon is this: occasions arise sometimes
+when a girl presses her knee, ever so gently, against the knee of the
+young man she is out with. The juxtaposing of the knee is brought
+about by any of a thousand causes. Often the topic of conversation
+has something to do with it: the young people, talking along
+pleasantly, will suddenly experience a sensation of compatibility, or
+of friendliness, or of pity, or of community-of-interests. One of them
+will make a remark singularly agreeable to the other person—a chance
+word or phrase that seems to establish a bond between them. Such a
+remark can cause the knee of the girl to be placed against the knee of
+the young man. Or, if the two people are in a cab, the turning of a
+sharp corner will do it. In canoes, the wash from a larger vessel will
+bring it about. In restaurants and dining-rooms it often takes place
+under the table, as though by accident. On divans, sofas, settees,
+couches, davenports, and the like, the slight twist of the young lady’s
+body incident to receiving a light for her cigarette will cause it. I
+could go on indefinitely, but there is no need. It is not a hard push,
+you understand—rather the merest touch of knee to knee, light as the
+brush of a falling blossom against one’s cheek, and just as lovely.
+
+Now, a normal male in whom there are no traces of frigidity will allow
+his knee to retain its original position, sometimes even exerting a
+very slight counter-pressure. A frigid male, however, will move his
+knee away at the first suggestion of contact, denying himself the
+electric stimulus of love’s first stirring. Why? That is what my
+research was conducted to discover. _I found that in 93 per cent of all
+cases, the male was suspicious; in 4 per cent he was ignorant; and in 3
+per cent he was tired._ I have presented these figures to the American
+Medical Association and am awaiting a reply.
+
+It is the female’s subtlety in her laying-on of the knee that annoys
+the male, I found. His recession is for the purpose of reassuring
+himself of his own integrity and perspicacity. If the female were to
+juxtapose in a forthright manner, if she were to preface her gesture
+with the remark: “I am thinking of letting my knee touch yours for the
+fun of it, Mortimer,” she might gain an entirely different response
+from the male.
+
+Many men with recessive knees have confided to me that they felt
+incapable of answering the pressure because of the effect it might
+have on their minds, with the accompanying loss of self-respect. I
+have established the fact that no _physical_ detriment is incurred by
+answered pressure—the only harmful effects are psychological. Some
+males admitted to an unwillingness to give any woman the satisfaction
+of believing that she was able to take her companion unaware. Still
+others told me that they feared the consequences of such an act: they
+were afraid that if ever they let down the bars and failed to turn
+away from knee pressure, they would likewise be unable to resist other
+juxtapositions in life and would continually be responding amiably to
+other amusing stimuli—sales talks, stock promotion, and the like.
+
+It was a young Paterson, N. J., girl by the name of Lillian Fuller
+who let drop the remark that has epitomized, for the sociological and
+anthropological world, the phenomenon of the recessive knee. “Fuller’s
+retort” is now a common phrase in the realm of psychotherapy.
+
+Miss Fuller was an unusually beautiful woman—young, accurate,
+sensitive. She was greatly attached to a man several years her
+senior in the buffing department; wanted to marry him. To this end
+she had laid her knee against his innumerable times without a single
+return of pressure. His frigidity, she realized, was gradually
+becoming prejudicial to his mental health, and so one evening, after
+experiencing for the hundredth time the withdrawal of his knee, she
+simply turned to him with a quiet smile playing on her face and said,
+“Say, what is the matter with you, anyway?”
+
+Her retort somehow summed up the whole question of frigidity in men.
+
+_The Declination of the Kiss._[21] Many men have told me that they
+would not object to sex were it not for its contactual aspect. That is,
+they said they would be perfectly willing to express their eroticism if
+it could be done at a reasonable distance—say fifty paces. These men
+(the frigid-_plus_ type) found kissing intolerable.
+
+[21] Now we’re getting down to business.
+
+[Illustration: “_Many men have told me that they would not object to
+sex were it not for its contactual aspect._” (_One such man is shown in
+the background._)]
+
+When they had an opportunity to kiss a young lady, they declined. They
+made it plain that they would be willing to blow a kiss across the room
+from their hand, but not execute it with their lips.
+
+I analyzed scores of these cases, questioning both the women and the
+men. (The women were mad as hornets.) I found that a small number
+of the kiss-declining men were suffering from a pathology of the
+eyes—either astigmatism or farsightedness—so that when they got really
+close to a girl, she blurred on them.[22] The vast majority of cases,
+however, were quite different. Their unwillingness I traced to a
+much subtler feeling than eye-strain. Your true anti-contactual, or
+kiss-decliner, is a very subtle individual indeed.
+
+[22] Incidentally, I might say that this blurring of the female before
+the eyes of the male is not entirely unpleasant. It’s kind of fun.
+
+[Illustration: “_Love had a simple directness which was not disturbed
+until the arrival, in the land, of the minnesingers._”]
+
+In effect, he is a throw-back to another period in history,
+specifically to the Middle Ages. He is a biological sport. (Note: this
+is very confusing, calling him a “sport,” because the ordinary “sport”
+is not a kiss-decliner at all—anything but. Please keep in mind,
+then, that when I use the term “sport” I want the strict biological
+interpretation put upon the word. I want it, and I intend to get it.
+If there are any of you who think you are going to find the use of the
+word “sport” in this connection so confusing as to make the rest of the
+chapter unintelligible, I wish you would drop out. Get something else
+to read, or, better yet, get some exercise.)
+
+No one can quite comprehend the motives and the successes of a
+kiss-decliner who does not recall his counterpart in mediæval history.
+In the Middle Ages, when men were lusty and full of red meat, their
+women expected as much. A baronial fellow, finishing his meal, made
+no ado about kissing a Middle Age woman. He just got up from the
+table and kissed her. Bango, and she was kissed. Love had a simple
+directness which was not disturbed until the arrival, in the land, of
+the _minnesingers_. It got so no baronial hall of the Middle Ages was
+free from these _minnesingers_. They kept getting in. They would bring
+their harps with them, and after dinner they would twang a couple of
+notes and then sing a frail, delicate song to the effect that women
+should be worshiped from afar, rather than possessed. To a baron who
+had just drunk a goblet of red wine, this new concept of womanhood was
+screamingly funny. While he was chuckling away to himself and cutting
+himself another side of beef, his wife, who had listened attentively
+to the song, would slip out into the alley behind the castle and there
+the _minnesinger_ would join her.
+
+[Illustration: _Mediæval baron, amused at minnesinger’s concept of
+Woman._]
+
+“Sing that one again,” she would say.
+
+“Which one?”
+
+“That one about worshiping me from a little distance. I want to hear
+that one again.”
+
+The _minnesinger_ would oblige. Then he would illustrate the theme
+by _not_ kissing the woman, but dancing off lightly down the hill,
+throwing his harp up into the air and catching it again as he went.
+
+“What a nice young man,” the baron’s wife would think, as she slowly
+turned and went in to bed.
+
+The kiss-decliner of today is a modern _minnesinger_. He is a sport
+in that he has varied suddenly from the normal type—which is still
+baronial. Of course, the amusing thing about his conduct is that
+oftentimes a woman assumes that she is being worshiped from afar, when
+as a matter of fact she is merely being _ignored from afar_. That is
+part of the trick of an anti-contactual person—he takes a perverse
+delight in allowing the woman whose kiss he has declined, to think of
+him as more lyrical than other men. When he leaves her presence, she
+is apt to think of him as off somewhere by the bank of a stream, lying
+flat on his back, his shaggy head buried in the tall grasses, dreaming
+of something or other—probably of her, whereas, if she would take the
+trouble to go to the nearest Liggett’s drug store she would probably
+find him there, getting a sundæ.
+
+By the mere gesture of declining a kiss a man can still make quite a
+lot of ground, even in these depleted days. The woman thinks: “He would
+not dream of embracing my body; now that’s pretty white of him!” Of
+course, it would be wrong to ascribe motives of sheer deliberateness
+to the frigid male. Often he is not a bad sort—merely is a fellow who
+prefers an imagined kiss to the real kind. An imagined kiss is more
+easily controlled, more thoroughly enjoyed, and less cluttery than an
+actual kiss. To kiss in dream is wholly pleasant. First, the woman is
+the one of your selection, not just anyone who happens to be in your
+arms at the moment. Second, the deed is garnished with a little sprig
+of glamour which the mind, in exquisite taste, contributes. Third, the
+lips, imaginatively, are placed just so, the right hand is placed just
+so, the concurrent thoughts arrive, just so. Except for the fact that
+the whole episode is a little bit stuffy, it is a superior experience
+all round. When a kiss becomes actual, anything is likely to happen.
+The lips, failing of the mark, may strike lightly against the end of
+the lady’s nose, causing the whole adventure to crack up; or the right
+hand may come in contact with the hard, jagged part of the shoulder
+blade; or, worst of all, the man’s thoughts may not clothe the moment
+with the proper splendor: he may be worrying about something.
+
+So you see, frigidity in men has many aspects, many angles. To me it is
+vastly more engrossing than frigidity in women, which is such a simple
+phenomenon you wonder anybody bothers about it at all.
+
+
+
+
+ANSWERS TO HARD QUESTIONS
+
+  [Note: These questions have been selected from among the
+  many thousand inquiries that were received by Dr. Karl Zaner
+  during the past year. They come from people who are sexually
+  inquisitive—people from every walk of life. The authors wish
+  to thank Dr. Zaner for allowing them to have access to his sex
+  files. It is with a sense of high adventure that we face the
+  task of answering, to the best of our ability, these perplexing
+  questions that deal so intimately with human lives.—THE AUTHORS.]
+
+
+_Q._ _My youngest boy, age 28, turned against love because in a book he
+was reading, where the writer meant to say, “A woman in love is sacred”
+there was a misprint and it came out, “A woman in love is scared.” How
+would you go about this?_
+
+_A._ We do not regard the case as typical. Presumably your boy is badly
+frightened himself, or he wouldn’t be reading books; he would be out
+somewhere. The way to overcome this is to build up his general health.
+
+_Q._ _Should a woman live with her husband if they are separated?_
+
+_A._ Yes. There is nothing that brings two people so close together as
+separation. In situations of the sort, the woman’s presence gradually
+becomes necessary on account of the condition of the man’s shirts. On
+first being separated from his wife, the husband commonly will be found
+to neglect his dirty clothes, from spite and from self-indulgence.
+Instead of gathering them into a pile and sending them to a laundry, he
+will put on yesterday’s shirt in the morning, and stop in a gentleman’s
+furnishing store to pick up a clean one on the way to the office. This
+procedure has a threefold allure for the man. First, it gets him to the
+office half an hour late; second, it takes him into a furnishing store;
+and third, when he looks into his shirt drawer in the morning and finds
+no shirts it assures him of the disorganized state of his life. To feel
+disorganized is to be perfectly happy.
+
+Things might go on this way indefinitely were it not for the economic
+side of the question. At three dollars a shirt (which is a conservative
+figure for a man separated from his wife) the shirt bill runs into
+eighteen dollars a week, plus another six dollars for underwear
+and socks. Furthermore, there is now a congested condition in the
+husband’s office, caused by the accumulation of dirty shirts which he
+has tucked into bottom drawers and filing cabinets. This shows up in
+his work.
+
+[Illustration: “_On first being separated from his wife, the husband
+commonly will be found to neglect his dirty clothes, from spite and
+from self-indulgence. Instead of gathering them into a pile and sending
+them to the laundry, he will put on yesterday’s shirt in the morning,
+and stop in a gentlemen’s furnishing store to pick up a clean one on
+the way to the office._” ]
+
+The impracticability of two people living apart becomes apparent, too,
+in the matter of the old 1916 Cadillac touring car which they own. On
+separating, the husband will generously give the car to his wife to
+use, but that doesn’t alter the fact that he, and he alone, knows what
+you have to do when the car “does that funny thing.” Thus, the husband
+is apt any time during the day to pick up the phone and hear his wife’s
+voice:
+
+“Dear, I’m on the Merrick Road between Bellport and Patchogue, and the
+car is doing that funny thing again.” This means dropping whatever work
+he is doing, taking a cab to the Penn station and a Long Island train
+to the scene of the breakdown. This also shows up in his work. It never
+could happen if husband and wife were living together, because in that
+case they would never be on cordial enough terms for him to let her use
+the car.
+
+There is another phase of separation that is perhaps more alarming
+than those we have mentioned, namely, the possible effect the news of
+it might have on the health of the wife’s parents or the health of the
+husband’s parents. I recall the case of a couple who over a period
+of years tried to live apart without telling the wife’s mother—who
+had a frail heart and who liked to see young people together, not
+apart. (Note: old ladies don’t know _why_ they like to see young
+people together—they can give no reason; yet just the thought of two
+young people separating excites them unduly, and, when their heart
+is unreliable, is apt to carry them off.) So this young pair, out of
+consideration, although separated, sent community Christmas presents
+to the parents and wrote letters describing joint experiences, until,
+after two years and eight months of struggling along and scheming, they
+finally gave up the battle and decided it would be simpler to take
+an apartment together somewhere. Sheer fatigue united them. They are
+residing, to this day, in North Pelham, and the wife’s mother is still
+alive and well. Getting better every day, doctors say.
+
+So our advice to any couple is just this: separate if you must, but by
+all means live together—no matter how your friends and neighbors talk.
+
+_Q._ _I have an aquarium and I got a snail for it because they told me
+it would keep the water clean, and the snail unexpectedly bore young,
+although it was in there all alone. I mean there weren’t any other
+snails in there, only fish. How could it have young, very well?_
+
+_A._ The snail in your aquarium is a mollusc. It is quite likely an
+hermaphrodite, even though it came from a reputable department store.
+For being hermaphroditic, nobody can blame a snail. We cannot tell
+you everything we know about the gastropods because we know, possibly,
+more than is good for us. In the absence of specific information to
+the contrary, we would say that the snail in your aquarium had been
+going around a good deal with other snails before you got him (her).
+Some molluscs (not many) can have children merely by sitting around
+and thinking about it. Others can have children by living in a state
+of reciprocity with other hermaphrodites. Still others are like us,
+diœcious, possessed of only one sexual nature but thankful for small
+favors.
+
+The shellfish and the snails are a great group, though it is a pose
+with many people to consider them dull. Usually the people who find
+molluscs dull are dull themselves. We have met molluscs in many parts
+of the world: in gardens in France, on the rocks at low tide on Long
+Island Sound, in household aquaria, on the sidewalks of suburban towns
+in the early mornings, in restaurants, and in forests. Everywhere
+we found them to be sensitive creatures, imaginative and possessed
+of a lively sense of earth’s pleasant rhythm. Snails have a kind of
+nobility. Zoölogists will tell you that they occupy, in the animal
+kingdom, a position of enviable isolation. They go their own way.
+
+We can understand your curiosity about sex in snails. Molluscs are
+infinitely varied in their loves, their hates, and their predilections.
+They have a way of carrying out ideas they get in their head. They are
+far from cold, as many people suppose them; indeed, one of the most
+fascinating love stories we ever read was in the _Cambridge Natural
+History_, in which was described the tryst kept by a pair of snails
+on a garden wall. We have never forgotten the first sentence of that
+romantic and idyllic tale, nor have we forgotten the name of the
+snail, L. Maximus. The story started: “L. Maximus has been observed
+at midnight to ascend a wall or some perpendicular surface.” It then
+went on to relate how, after some moments spent greeting each other,
+crawling round and round, the snails let themselves down on a little
+ladder of their own devising, and there, suspended in the air ten
+inches or so from the top of the wall, they found love.
+
+Often very fecund, molluscs are rarely too busy to give attention to
+their children after birth, or to prepare for their coming. There is,
+in Algeria, a kind of mollusc whose young return for shelter to the
+body of their mother, somewhat in the manner of little kangaroos. There
+is, in the Philippines, a snail who is so solicitous for her expected
+babies that she goes to the trouble of climbing, with infinite pains
+and no little discomfort, to the top of a tall tree, and there deposits
+her eggs in a leaf, folding the leaf adroitly for protection. Another
+kind of mollusc, having laid her eggs upon a stone, amuses herself by
+arranging them like the petals of a rose, and hatches them by holding
+her foot on them. Molluscs tend to business.
+
+Sometimes different species intermarry, but this is rare. The
+interesting point about it is that such unions generally take place
+when the air is heavily charged with electricity, as before a storm,
+or when great rains have made the earth wet. The Luxembourg Garden in
+Paris is a place snails go to for clandestine matches of this sort. H.
+Variabilis goes there, and Pisana. The moisture, the electricity, the
+fragrant loveliness of a Paris night, stir them strangely.
+
+Probably, if you know so little of the eroticism of snails, you have
+not heard of the darts some of them carry—tiny daggers, hard and
+sharp, with which they prick each other for the excitement it affords.
+These darts are made of carbonate of lime. The Germans call them
+_Liebespfeil_, “love shaft.” Many British molluscs are without them,
+but that’s the way it goes.
+
+We could tell much more. We could tell about molluscs that possess
+the curious property of laying their eggs on the outside of their own
+shell, and of the strange phenomenon of the Cephalopod, who, when he
+takes leave of his lady, leaves one of his arms with her, so that
+she may never lack for an embrace. But we feel we have answered your
+question.
+
+
+
+
+GLOSSARY
+
+
+  AARON’S DISEASE: Put in here merely because it might confuse the
+  reader if we started right off with Admiral Schley.
+
+  ADMIRAL SCHLEY: American naval hero in whose splendid
+  achievements men took an interest when their absorption in love
+  died down, circa 1900.
+
+  AMATORY INSTINCTS: Interest in sex.
+
+  APATHY: Almost total loss of interest in sex.
+
+  ATROPHY: Total loss of interest in sex.
+
+  ATTACK: Man’s method of showing interest in women, so called
+  because of his brusque desire to get at the matter in hand and
+  have done with it.
+
+  BEGONIA-ISM: Tendency of the male to raise small potted plants,
+  and not go out.
+
+  BENIGN STUPOR: Alarming condition in a husband or lover which
+  causes him to sit around in his bathrobe and slippers, brooding,
+  instead of working or anything.
+
+  BIOLOGICO-CULTURAL: A feminine type; one who expresses her erotic
+  nature verbally.
+
+  BOTHER: Annoyance; frequently confused with “pother,” which means
+  uncalled-for interest in something, usually sex.
+
+  BOXED-IN: Caught, or trapped, as a husband by a wife, or the
+  delusion of being caught or trapped.
+
+  BUTCHER’S TWINE: A kind of stout cord of no particular interest
+  to anybody.
+
+  CAUSATION: The factors back of a male’s doubt or suspicion.
+
+  CHARADES: (1) Parlor game devised by women to fend off men
+  (1900–1909); (2) acting up in a skittish manner about the facts
+  of life, instead of getting right down to them; twitching,
+  nervous twitching.
+
+  COMPLEX: Mental crack-up caused by an emotional, or physical,
+  inability to get away from, or wind things up with, a person of
+  the opposite sex.
+
+  COMPLEX, NUCLEAR: Shock caused by discovery of a person of the
+  opposite sex in his or her true colors; beginning of a general
+  breakdown.
+
+  DEFENSE: Feminine excuses, tricks, devices, etc.
+
+  DELAY MECHANISM: Pother.
+
+  DETERIORATION (BENIGN): Going quietly to pieces as the result of
+  marriage or a love affair.
+
+  DETERIORATION (MALIGNANT): Going loudly to pieces under the same
+  circumstances; fidgeting, bawling, berating, etc.
+
+  DIVERSION SUBTERFUGE: Trick employed by women to keep men’s minds
+  on ethereal, rather than physical, matters.
+
+  EMPIRIC: National viewpoint of sex.
+
+  EROTIC: Of or pertaining to sex, usually in a pretty far-fetched
+  manner.
+
+  EXHIBITIONISM: Going too far, but not really meaning it.
+
+  EXOTIC: Of an alarming nature, particularly to parents.
+
+  FIXATION: Too great dependence on one woman.
+
+  FRAGMENTATION OF PERSONALITY: Inception of general decline on the
+  part of the male.
+
+  FRIGIDITY (in men): Suspicion, ignorance, or fatigue, mostly
+  suspicion.
+
+  FUDGE-MAKING: Feminine trick or device.
+
+  FULLER’S RETORT: A remark made by a Paterson, N. J., girl one
+  night in Paterson, N. J.
+
+  GEORGE SMITH: A despondent Indianapolis real-estate man. Pulling
+  a George Smith: attempting to find something more important than,
+  and just as interesting as, women.
+
+  JULIA MARLOWE: Actress.
+
+  LIBIDO: “Pleasure-principle.”
+
+  LOOSENESS OF SYSTEMATIZATION: The going to pieces of a husband.
+
+  LOVE: The pleasant confusion which we know exists.
+
+  LOVING: Being confused by, or confusing some one.
+
+  MASCULINE PROTEST: Male disdain for things which he does not
+  understand.
+
+  NARCISSISM: Attempt to be self-sufficient, with overtones.
+
+  NEURO-VEGETATIVE REFLEXES: A male’s, particularly a husband’s,
+  quick, unpremeditated reactions to stewed vegetables, especially
+  spinach, and to certain salads.
+
+  NEUROSIS: The beginning of the end, unless the husband can go
+  away somewhere.
+
+  NEUROTIC: Wanting something, but she doesn’t know what; desirous
+  of something she hasn’t got and probably can’t, or shouldn’t,
+  have.
+
+  1907, PANIC OF: Result of woman’s inhumanity to man (1900–1907).
+
+  NO BETTER THAN SHE OUGHT TO BE (woman’s definitions): (1)
+  indiscreet; (2) charming; (3) pretty and vivacious; (4)
+  oversexed; (5) living in sin.
+
+  NORM: All Quiet.
+
+  NUMERICAL PROTECTION: Other people in the room.
+
+  OSCULATORY JUSTIFICATION: Reasons for kissing, growing out of the
+  early American credo that kissing for kissing’s sake would send
+  one straight to hell.
+
+  PARANOIA: The last stages of what was once a bridegroom.
+
+  PASSION: Expression of the sex principle without so much fuss.
+
+  PEDESTALISM: The American male’s reverence for the female or,
+  better yet, her insistence on being revered, which amounts to the
+  same thing.
+
+  PHYSICO-PSYCHIC: State in which the physical gets tangled up
+  with the spiritual, after the manner of a setter pup throwing a
+  huntsman by getting between his feet.
+
+  PLEASURE-PRINCIPLE: See Libido.
+
+  POSSESSIVE COMPLEX: Innocent desire to kiss and fondle, sometimes
+  to maul or wool.
+
+  POTHER: Uncalled-for interest in something—almost always sex.
+
+  PROTECTIVE REACTION: Putting a man in his place.
+
+  PSYCHE: Wings for the feet of clay.
+
+  PSYCHO-NEUROSIS: Same as neurosis, only worse.
+
+  PSYCHOSIS: State of being beside oneself to such an extent that
+  it is doubtful if one can pull oneself together.
+
+  PULLED-AWAY: Refers to the knee of a man who is suspicious or
+  tired.
+
+  RECESSIVE KNEE: The outstanding phenomenon of masculine
+  frigidity; man’s refusal to answer the pressure.
+
+  SCHMALHAUSEN, SAMUEL D.: Student of misbehavior.
+
+  SCHMALHAUSEN TROUBLE: Illness commonly found in young ladies who
+  read in cramped quarters.
+
+  SMITH, GEORGE: Same as George Smith.
+
+  SWASTIKA: Symbol which distracted American suitors used to scrawl
+  on desk pads, margins of books, and so on.
+
+  TROUBLE, SCHMALHAUSEN: See Schmalhausen trouble.
+
+  ÜBERTRAGUNG: Period of transition during which the male strives
+  to transmute his ardor for women into the semblance of ardor for
+  games.
+
+  VOYEURISM: Sex Kibitzing.
+
+
+
+
+A NOTE ON THE DRAWINGS IN THIS BOOK
+
+
+The inclusion, in this volume, of some fifty-two drawings by James
+Thurber, was on the whole intentional. Because, however, of the strong
+feeling of suspicion which they will arouse in certain quarters, it may
+not be amiss to offer some explanation. For this task I feel peculiarly
+fitted, for it was I who, during those trying months when the book
+was in the making, picked up the drawings night after night from the
+floor under Thurber’s desk, picked them up when I was so tired in body
+and soul that I could scarcely stoop; it was I who, by gaining the
+confidence of the charwomen, nightly redeemed countless other thousands
+of unfinished sketches from the huge waste baskets; and finally, it
+was my incredible willingness to go through with the business of
+“inking-in” the drawings (necessitated by the fact that they were done
+in such faint strokes of a broken pencil as to be almost invisible to
+the naked eye) that at last brought them to the point where they could
+be engraved and reproduced.
+
+To understand, even vaguely, Thurber’s art, it is necessary to grasp
+the two major themes which underlie all his drawings. The first theme
+is what I call the “melancholy of sex”; the other is what I can best
+describe as the “implausibility of animals.” These two basic ideas
+motivate, subconsciously, his entire creative life. Just how some
+of the animals shown in these pages “come in” is not clear even to
+me—except in so far as any animal must be regarded as sexually relevant
+because of our human tendency to overestimate what can be learned from
+watching it.
+
+When one studies the drawings, it soon becomes apparent that a strong
+undercurrent of grief runs through them. In almost every instance
+the _man_ in the picture is badly frightened, or even hurt. These
+“Thurber men” have come to be recognized as a distinct type in the
+world of art; they are frustrated, fugitive beings; at times they seem
+vaguely striving to get out of something without being seen (a room, a
+situation, a state of mind), at other times they are merely perplexed
+and too humble, or weak, to move. The _women_, you will notice, are
+quite different: temperamentally they are much better adjusted to their
+surroundings than are the men, and mentally they are much less capable
+of making themselves uncomfortable.
+
+It would be foolish to attempt here a comprehensive appreciation
+of the fierce sweep, the economy, and the magnificent obscurity of
+Thurber’s work, nor can I adequately indicate the stark qualities in
+the drawings that have earned for him the title of “the Ugly Artist.”
+All I, all anybody, can do is to hint at the uncanny faithfulness
+with which he has caught—caught and thrown to the floor—the daily,
+indeed the almost momently, severity of life’s mystery, as well as the
+charming doubtfulness of its purpose.
+
+                                                                E. B. W.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF HARPER
+
+NEW YORK
+
+Publishers of BOOKS and of HARPER’S MAGAZINE
+
+_Established 1817_]
+
+[Illustration: (Sketch of man holding folded umbrella, hand outstretched
+to catch water drops from above.)]
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
+
+Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and
+outside quotations. Illustrations without captions have had descriptions
+added, these are indicated with parentheses.
+
+Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected
+after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and
+consultation of external sources.
+
+Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added, when a
+predominant preference was found in the original book.
+
+Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and
+inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
+
+  Pg 16: “Chickamaugua” replaced with “Chickamauga”.
+     89: “Schmaulhausen” replaced with “Schmalhausen”.
+    162: “hungrig” replaced with “hungrige”.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77883 ***
diff --git a/77883-h/77883-h.htm b/77883-h/77883-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3d52b6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/77883-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,5317 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
+    <title>
+      Is sex necessary? Or why you feel the way you do | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+    <style>
+
+body {
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
+    text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+h1{
+  font-size: 2.25em;
+  word-spacing: .2em;
+  font-weight: normal;
+  line-height: 1.1em;
+
+}
+h2{
+  font-size: 1.2em;
+  margin-top: 6em;
+  font-weight: normal;
+}
+h3 {
+  margin-top: 1.5em;
+  font-weight:normal;
+  font-size: .9em;
+  word-spacing: .3em;
+}
+p {
+    margin-top: .51em;
+    text-align: justify;
+    margin-bottom: .49em;
+}
+
+.p2       {margin-top: 2em;}
+.p4       {margin-top: 4em;}
+.p6       {margin-top: 6em;}
+
+hr {
+    width: 33%;
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+    margin-left: 33.5%;
+    margin-right: 33.5%;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;}
+@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} }
+
+hr.r20  {width: 20%; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em; margin-left: 40%; margin-right: 40%;}
+
+div.chapter {page-break-before: always;}
+h2.nobreak  {page-break-before: avoid;}
+
+
+table {
+    margin-left: auto;
+    margin-right: auto;
+}
+table.autotable    { border-collapse: collapse; }
+table.autotable td,
+table.autotable th { padding: 0.25em; }
+
+
+table.toc    { border-collapse: collapse; }
+table.toc td  { padding: .25em 1.25em .25em 0.25em; }
+
+.tdl      {text-align: left;}
+.tdr      {text-align: right;}
+
+.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+    /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+    position: absolute;
+    left: 92%;
+    font-size: small;
+    text-align: right;
+    font-style: normal;
+    font-weight: normal;
+    font-variant: normal;
+    text-indent: 0;
+} /* page numbers */
+blockquote {
+    margin-top: 0;
+    margin-bottom: 0;
+    margin-left: 25%;
+    margin-right: 30%;
+}
+.center   {text-align: center;}
+
+.right    {text-align: right;}
+
+.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;}
+
+figcaption   {font-weight: normal;
+              font-size: 90%;
+              padding-bottom: 1em;}
+
+figcaption.captionblock {
+   margin-left: 20%;
+   margin-right: 20%;
+   text-indent: 0em;
+   text-align: justify;
+}
+
+figcaption p {margin-top: 0;
+              margin-bottom: .2em;
+              text-align: inherit;}
+
+/* Images */
+
+img {
+    max-width: 100%;
+    height: auto;
+}
+img.w100 {width: 100%;}
+
+
+.figcenter {
+    margin: auto;
+    text-align: center;
+    page-break-inside: avoid;
+    max-width: 100%;
+}
+.figright {
+    float: right;
+    clear: right;
+    margin-left: 1em;
+    margin-bottom: 1em;
+    margin-top: 1em;
+    margin-right: 0;
+    padding: 0;
+    text-align: center;
+    page-break-inside: avoid;
+    max-width: 100%;
+}
+ .x-ebookmaker .figright {float: right;}
+/* Footnotes */
+.footnotes        {border: 1px dashed;}
+
+.footnote         {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.85em;}
+
+.footnote .label  {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;}
+
+.fnanchor {
+    vertical-align: super;
+    font-size: .8em;
+    text-decoration:
+    none;
+}
+
+/* Poetry */
+/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry */
+.poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;}
+.poetry-container {text-align: center;}
+.poetry           {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;}
+.poetry .stanza   {margin: 1em auto;}
+.poetry .verse    {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;}
+
+/* Transcriber's notes */
+.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA;
+    color: black;
+    font-size:small;
+    padding:0.5em;
+    margin-bottom:5em;
+    font-family:sans-serif, serif;
+}
+
+
+      p {
+          text-indent: 1em;
+      }
+
+      /* to undo start of para indent */
+      .noindent {text-indent: 0;}
+      .center {text-indent: 0;}
+
+      .right    {text-align: right;}
+
+
+      .p0       {margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: 0em}
+      .p3       {margin-top: 3em;}
+      .p2       {margin-top: 2em;}
+      .pb2       {margin-bottom: 2em;}
+      .p4       {margin-top: 4em;}
+      .pb4      {margin-bottom: 4em;}
+      .p6       {margin-top: 6em;}
+
+      .pad2     {padding-left: 2em;}
+
+      .pad1r     {padding-right: 1em;}
+
+
+      .fs50    {font-size: 50%;}
+      .fs120   {font-size: 120%;}
+      .fs150   {font-size: 150%;}
+
+      .wsp1 {word-spacing: 0.1em;}
+      .wsp2 {word-spacing: 0.2em;}
+      .wsp3 {word-spacing: 0.3em;}
+      .lsp2 {letter-spacing: 0.2em;}
+
+      .hang1 {
+          text-indent: -1em;
+          padding-left: 1em;
+      }
+      .hang2 {
+          text-indent: -2em;
+          padding-left: 2em;
+      }
+
+      .lh14 {
+          line-height: 140%;
+      }
+
+      .tdrt     {text-align: right;
+                 vertical-align: top;}
+      .tdrb     {text-align: right;
+                 vertical-align: bottom;}
+
+      .wd80     {width: 80%;}
+
+      .pagenum {
+	  position: absolute;
+	  left: 92%;
+	  font-size: small;
+	  text-align: right;
+	  font-style: normal;
+	  font-weight: normal;
+	  font-variant: normal;
+	  text-indent: 0;
+	  color: #A9A9A9
+      } /* page numbers */
+
+      .fnanchor {
+	  vertical-align: super;
+	  font-size: x-small;
+	  text-decoration:
+	      none;
+      }
+
+      /* Transcriber's notes */
+     .transnote {
+             background-color: #ffffff;
+             border: 1px solid;
+             color: black;
+             font-size:small;
+             padding:0.5em;
+             margin-bottom:5em;
+             font-family:sans-serif, serif;
+      }
+
+      .corr {
+	  text-decoration: none;
+	  border-bottom: thin dashed blue;}
+
+      .x-ebookmaker .corr {
+	  text-decoration: none;
+	  border-bottom: none;}
+
+
+      /* Illustration classes */
+      .illowp35 {width: 35%; max-width:19em;}
+      .illowp40 {width: 40%; max-width:20em;}
+      .illowp50 {width: 50%; max-width:24em;}
+      .illowp60 {width: 60%; max-width:28em;}
+      .illowp70 {width: 70%; max-width:32em;}
+      .illowp80 {width: 80%; max-width:35em;}
+      .illowp90 {width: 90%; max-width:38em;}
+      .illowp100 {width: 100%; max-width:40em;}
+
+      /* for non-image large letter dropcaps  */
+      p.drop-cap {text-indent: -.7em;}
+
+      /* note: margin = top, right, bottom, left (clockwise?)*/
+      p.drop-cap:first-letter  {
+	  float: left;
+	  margin: 0.1em 0.25em 0em .25em;
+	  font-size: 275%;
+	  line-height:0.7em;
+	  clear: both;
+      }
+
+      .x-ebookmaker   p.drop-cap {text-indent: 0em;}
+
+      .x-ebookmaker   p.drop-cap:first-letter {
+	  float: none;
+	  margin: 0;
+	  font-size: 100%;}
+/* Poetry indents */
+.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3.0em;}
+.poetry .indent6 {text-indent: 0.0em;}
+
+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77883 ***</div>
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<strong>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE</strong>
+<p class="noindent">Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been
+placed at the end of the paragraph.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">The new original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Some minor changes to the text are noted at the <a href="#END_NOTE">end of the book</a>.</p>
+
+</div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<figure class="figcenter illowp60" id="i_a001" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_a001.jpg" alt="Original Cover">
+</figure>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center wsp1 fs150 p4 pb4">
+IS SEX NECESSARY?
+</p>
+</div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<figure class="figcenter illowp80" id="i_b002b" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_b002b.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p>“<span class="smcap">New York became the capital of the sexual Revolution.</span>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h1>
+<span class="wsp3">IS SEX NECESSARY?</span><br>
+<span class="fs50">OR<br>
+WHY YOU FEEL THE WAY YOU DO</span><br>
+</h1>
+<p class="p3 center fs120 wsp2">
+<span class="smcap">By</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">James Thurber and E. B. White</span>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i_b003" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_b003.jpg"
+alt="Sketch of woman seated on the floor">
+</figure>
+
+
+<p class="center fs120 wsp2">
+<i>Harper &amp; Brothers Publishers</i><br>
+<span class="allsmcap">NEW YORK AND LONDON</span><br>
+<span class="lsp2">1929</span>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center allsmcap wsp3">
+IS SEX NECESSARY?
+</p>
+<hr class="r20">
+<p class="allsmcap center wsp3 lh14 pb2">
+COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY HARPER &amp; BROTHERS<br>
+FIRST EDITION<br>
+I-D
+</p>
+<figure class="figcenter illowp70" id="i_b004" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_b004.jpg"
+alt="Sketch of two guinea pigs touching nose to nose">
+</figure>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+
+<p class="center fs120 p4 pb4 wsp2">
+<span class="smcap">To Daisy and Jeanie</span>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp60" id="i_b007" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_b007.jpg"
+alt="Sketch of man kneeling, looking back over his shoulder">
+</figure>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak p0" id="CONTENTS">
+    CONTENTS
+  </h2>
+
+
+<table class="toc wd80">
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td class="tdl hang1">
+<span class="smcap">Foreword</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdrb">
+<a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td class="tdl hang1">
+<span class="smcap">Preface</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdrb">
+<a href="#Page_xvii">xvii</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrt">
+I
+</td>
+<td class="tdl hang1">
+<span class="smcap">The Nature of the American Male: A Study of Pedestalism</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdrb">
+<a href="#Page_1">1</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrt">
+II
+</td>
+<td class="tdl hang1">
+<span class="smcap">How to Tell Love from Passion</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdrb">
+<a href="#Page_34">34</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrt">
+III
+</td>
+<td class="tdl hang1">
+<span class="smcap">A Discussion of Feminine Types</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdrb">
+<a href="#Page_55">55</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrt">
+IV
+</td>
+<td class="tdl hang1">
+<span class="smcap">The Sexual Revolution: Being a Rather Complete Survey of the Entire Sexual Scene</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdrb">
+<a href="#Page_73">73</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrt">
+V
+</td>
+<td class="tdl hang1">
+<span class="smcap">The Lilies-and-Bluebird Delusion</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdrb">
+<a href="#Page_92">92</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrt">
+VI
+</td>
+<td class="tdl hang1">
+<span class="smcap">What Should Children Tell Parents?</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdrb">
+<a href="#Page_112">112</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrt">
+VII
+</td>
+<td class="tdl hang1">
+<span class="smcap">Claustrophobia, or What Every Young Wife Should Know</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdrb">
+<a href="#Page_133">133</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrt">
+VIII
+</td>
+<td class="tdl hang1">
+<span class="smcap">Frigidity in Men</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdrb">
+<a href="#Page_160">160</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td class="tdl hang1">
+<span class="smcap">Answers to Hard Questions</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdrb">
+<a href="#Page_180">180</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td class="tdl hang1">
+<span class="smcap">Glossary</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdrb">
+<a href="#Page_189">189</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<div class="poetry-container pb4">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Things look pretty bad right now</i>”</div>
+     <div class="verse indent6">—<span class="smcap">Maj. Gen. Briggs, at Shiloh</span></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100 p6" id="i_b009" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_b009.jpg"
+alt="Sketch of four men, with downcast posture, in a line.">
+</figure>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noindent p4 pb4 wsp1"><span class="smcap fs150">Any</span> reader who has
+already begun to be confused
+by the drawings in
+this book should turn to
+<a href="#Page_195">Page 195</a>, where they are
+explained.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="FOREWORD">
+    FOREWORD
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">During</span> the past year, two factors in our civilization
+have been greatly overemphasized. One
+is aviation, the other is sex. Looked at calmly,
+neither diversion is entitled to the space it has
+been accorded. Each has been deliberately
+promoted.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of aviation, persons interested in
+the sport saw that the problem was to simplify
+it and make it seem safer. They introduced
+stabilizers and emergency landing fields. Even
+so, the plain fact remained that very few people
+were fitted for flying.</p>
+
+<p>With sex, the opposite was true. Everybody
+was fitted for it, but there was a lack of general
+interest. The problem in this case was to make
+sex seem more complex and dangerous. This
+task was taken up by sociologists, analysts, gynecologists,
+psychologists, and authors; they approached
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xii">[xii]</span>it with a good deal of scientific
+knowledge and an immense zeal. They joined
+forces and made the whole matter of sex complicated
+beyond the wildest dreams of our
+fathers. The country became flooded with
+books. Sex, which had hitherto been a physical
+expression, became largely mental. The whole
+order of things changed. To prepare for marriage,
+young girls no longer assembled a hope
+chest—they read books on abnormal psychology.
+If they finally did marry, they found themselves
+with a large number of sex books on
+hand, but almost no pretty underwear. Most
+of them, luckily, never married at all—just continued
+to read.</p>
+
+<p>It was because we observed how things were
+going with marriage and love that we set out,
+ourselves, to prepare a sex book of a different
+kind. In this venture we were greatly encouraged
+by our many friends of both sexes,
+most of whom never thought we could do it.
+Our method was the opposite of that used by
+other writers on sex: we saw clearly in what
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</span>respect they failed, and we profited by their
+example. We saw, chiefly, that these writers
+expended their entire emotional energy in their
+writing and never had time for anything else.
+The great length of their books (some of them
+ran into two volumes and came in a cardboard
+box) testified to their absorption with the sheer
+business of writing. <i>They clearly hadn’t been
+out much.</i> They had been home writing; and
+meanwhile what was sex doing? Not standing
+still, you can better believe. So we determined
+that our procedure would be to approach sex
+bravely, and frequently. “Approach the subject
+in a lively spirit,” we told ourselves, “and
+the writing will take care of itself.” (It is only
+fair to say that the writing <i>didn’t</i> take care of itself;
+the writing was a lot of work and gave us
+the usual pain in the neck while we were doing
+it.)</p>
+
+<p>At any rate we gathered about us a host of
+congenial people of all types, mostly girls. Gay,
+somber, petulant, all kinds. We also got a lot
+of dogs, mostly Scotch terriers, a breed noted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</span>for stoicism, bravery, and humor. Thus
+equipped, we set about the work with a good
+spirit, and by dint of a rather unusual energy
+were able to prepare the book for publication
+and see it through the press without giving up
+any social engagements or isolating ourselves
+from the sexual world. Furthermore, all the
+time we were writing the book, we continued
+to earn our living—in itself no easy matter.</p>
+
+<p>We early resolved to keep alive our curiosity
+about things. Wherever we went we asked
+questions. Aware of the tangled sexual thread
+running through the pattern of people’s lives,
+we continually asked the question: “Why is it
+that <i>you</i> never got straightened out?” The
+answers we got to this question helped us immeasurably.</p>
+
+<p>Although most of our research was in life’s
+laboratory, so to speak, we wish also to express
+our indebtedness to those authors whose writings
+on the subject inspired us. How can we
+forget, in this connection, such men as Will
+Durant, Samuel D. Schmalhausen, Dr. Joseph
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xv">[xv]</span>Collins, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Gardner
+Murphy?</p>
+
+<p>Most particularly are we desirous of acknowledging
+a debt to those two remarkable
+men, who, more than any others, gave us the
+courage to go on; two men without whose example
+we never could have found in sex a daily
+inspiration; those two geniuses whom it is our
+pleasure to call the “deans of American sex,”—Walter
+Tithridge and Karl Zaner.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp40" id="i_b015" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_b015.jpg"
+alt="Sketch of man seated on bench, with downcast head">
+</figure>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xvii">[xvii]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="PREFACE">
+    PREFACE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Men</span> and women have always sought, by
+one means and another, to be together rather
+than apart. At first they were together by the
+simple expedient of being unicellular, and there
+was no conflict. Later the cell separated, or
+began living apart, for reasons which are not
+clear even today, although there is considerable
+talk. Almost immediately the two halves of
+the original cell began experiencing a desire to
+unite again—usually with a half of some other
+cell. This urge has survived down to our time.
+Its commonest manifestations are marriage, divorce,
+neuroses, and, a little less frequently,
+gun-fire.</p>
+
+<p>When society decided it would have to set up
+laws to govern these polymorphous manifestations
+of a once simple urge which had got out
+of hand, it did so without a very clear notion
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xviii">[xviii]</span>of sex as we know it today. It did not realize
+that direction of the Love Urge by outside
+forces of law and order must be subversive of
+the complete flowering of the individual—and
+is there anything in life more wonderful than
+a completely flowered individual, man or
+woman?</p>
+
+<p>Yet under all the weight of social regulation,
+the ancient desire to unite and to separate and
+to unite again, usually with some one else, has
+survived, for the simple reason that it is stronger
+than man-made law and because cells, as now
+constituted, are more astute than the police.
+They have to be. Thus we find men and
+women being consistently together even against
+the rigorous dictates of a prescribed behaviorism
+to whose institutional coldness the warmth
+of their emotional natures is irrevocably opposed.
+And so on.</p>
+
+<p>As far as I can make out, the authors of this
+remarkable book subscribe to the modern ideal
+of freedom in sex, but do not believe that marriage
+has yet been proved a failure in every
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xix">[xix]</span>case, nor that sex can profitably be examined
+entirely apart from that old institution. In this
+viewpoint the authors and myself are at one,
+which is probably the reason I was asked to
+write an introduction.</p>
+
+<p>Marriage, as an instrument, is a well-nigh
+perfect thing. The trouble is that it cannot be
+successfully applied to the present-day emotional
+relationships of men and women. It
+could much more easily be applied to something
+else, possibly professional tennis. As they now
+stand, marriage and sex militate against each
+other. If marriage is to be retained it must be
+perfected to meet the new demands and intricacies
+of sex. There is, doubtless, a discoverable
+plane on which marriage and sex, the institutional
+and the emotional, could meet and, as
+who should say, become friends. Not only
+marriage, however, but sex as well, would have
+to make certain concessions. Tempered by this
+balanced viewpoint, one must find it, then, logically
+impossible to pose only the question,
+“What is wrong with marriage?” It becomes
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xx">[xx]</span>necessary also to pose the question, “What is
+wrong with sex?” For if it is plausible to
+assume that something may be so radically
+wrong with a well-nigh perfect institutional
+device that it might be well for society to
+abandon it, one must, in all fairness, entertain
+the suspicion that something may be so
+wrong with a well-nigh perfect emotional relationship
+that it might be well for society to
+abandon it, too.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_b021" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_b021.jpg"
+alt="Sketch of naked woman on hands and knees">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>Early Woman.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>People never have been satisfied with marriage.
+If the contracting parties are satisfied
+with it, some one else isn’t. How often one
+hears the expression, “I don’t know what she
+sees in him.” As a matter of fact, however, we
+hear that expression less frequently today than
+we used to, because psychology has enabled us
+to know what she does see in him. There is,
+however, still considerable doubt as to what he
+sees in her. Some authorities claim that no man
+can see all there is to see in a woman, because
+she is too complicated and mysterious for him.
+This notion—that Woman is more incomprehensible
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxi">[xxi]</span>than Man—has persisted for centuries.
+It is of a piece with the legend that Woman is
+deserving of a certain form of idolatrous worship,
+a legend that grew up in the early ages of
+the world. When Man first came into being,
+he did not think that the female was extraordinary.
+He did not think that anything was
+extraordinary. The world was unattractive
+physically, and a little dull. There was no vegetation,
+and without vegetation there can be no
+fancy. Then trees came into existence. It was
+trees that first made Man begin to brood. In
+pondering their leafy intricacies he got his
+first crude concept of beauty. He used to tear
+great branches out of trees and take them home
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxii">[xxii]</span>to his cave woman. “Here,” he would say to
+her, “lie on these.” The man then reclined in
+a corner of the cave and watched the woman’s
+hair mingle with the leaves, and her eyes shine
+through them, until he fell asleep. His dreams
+were troubled. Woman came into his dreams
+as a tree, then a tree came into his dreams as a
+woman. He also got her eyes, shining through
+the leaves, all mixed up with the moon. Out
+of this curious and lamentable confusion grew
+the tendency in Man’s mind to identify Woman
+with the phenomena of the burgeoning earth
+and the mysteries of the illimitable heavens. As
+time went on Man rather enjoyed cultivating
+this idea. It was something to think about. It
+wasn’t much, but it was something. Thus was
+the subconscious born, with all its strange mixture
+of fact and symbol.</p>
+
+<p>As the vegetation of the earth grew more luxuriant
+Man grew more moody. Each new plant
+represented something that he could not easily
+fit into his practicable scheme of things (the tomato,
+for example, wasn’t fitted in until late in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxiii">[xxiii]</span>the nineteenth century). For the first wild iris,
+Man saw no conceivable use. However, he
+plucked it. It had, he noticed, that curious
+color, or pigmentation, which he associated
+with only two other things—the sky and
+Woman’s eyes. He brooded upon this astounding
+coincidence overlong. Often he got wet
+through, standing in a bog, contemplating a
+blue flag. Then he would take it home and
+give it to his mate.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp60" id="i_b023" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_b023.jpg"
+alt="Sketch of four spirals aranged like butterfly wings.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>Early Conference.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>All these things operated to bring about in
+Man’s mind an inclination to identify the wonders
+of the earth and sky with the physical fact
+of his mate’s existence. He decided they must
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxiv">[xxiv]</span>have a great deal in common, these wonders and
+this woman. What that was he determined to
+find out. Too proud at first, too male, to take
+his mate into his confidence in the matter of his
+uncertainties, he got to tramping the bogs and
+woods at night, seeking the answer. He bayed
+questions at the moon, he beseeched the trees to
+speak, he shouted at the wild iris. There was
+no answer. It was then that it occurred to Man
+that, since these things could not tell him the
+answer to the riddle of the universe, the only
+possible source of that information must repose
+in the living creature which he identified with
+them, the woman with skyey eyes and leafy hair.
+Then came that important night when one of
+the early men resolutely rose from his knees,
+under the moon, and started back to his cave to
+demand from his mate an explanation of all
+these mysteries. On the way a star fell. Those
+ages were notable for falling meteors. This one
+frightened the man as it crashed sizzling
+through the trees and buried itself with a moan
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxv">[xxv]</span>in the ground. He ran the rest of the way
+home, arriving breathless and white.</p>
+
+<p>“Wha’ was ’at?” he croaked, pointing behind
+him. His mate saw nothing but the waving of
+fern fronds in the wind, the form of some animal
+slinking into the woods.</p>
+
+<p>“It is nothing,” she said, and smiled, and ran
+her hand through his hair.</p>
+
+<p>Right then and there Man conceived the notion
+that Woman was so closely associated, so
+inextricably entwined with the wonders and
+terrors of the world, that she had no fear of
+them. She was in quiet league with the forces
+of life. She was an integral part of the stars
+and the moon, she was one with the trees and
+the iris in the bog. He fell down on his knees,
+the pitiable idiot, and grasped her about the
+waist.</p>
+
+<p>It is inconceivable that a myth as strong as
+this belief in the ineffability of Woman, as
+deeply rooted in the soils of time, can ever be
+completely eradicated. However fantastical,
+however untrue, crotchet or whim, fancy or
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxvi">[xxvi]</span>foible, there it is and there it has always been.
+To destroy it would be to put the female
+properly in her place, as a plain, unadorned
+unit in the senseless but unending pattern of
+biological continuity. Romantic love would
+disappear. Life would be simplified. Neuroses
+would vanish. But Man clings to his ancient
+and silly value. What it has done to him is
+quite easy to see. It has subordinated him to
+Woman, for one thing. The emotional nature
+of the male has either been overlooked altogether
+or greatly disparaged. “Isn’t that just
+like a man?” is an all-too-glib and common expression.
+It implies that one can virtually
+ascribe to all men the simple reactions which, in
+a number of men, inexpertly observed, have
+proved <i>likely</i> to take place. (The italic is
+mine.)</p>
+
+<p>Observers have been too prone to hold that
+the male is negligible, and to overemphasize the
+importance of the female. Thus we find such
+keen analysts as Ira S. Wile and Mary Day
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxvii">[xxvii]</span>Winn&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_1_1" href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> asserting that “anyone who wishes to
+understand modern marriage must center his
+attention on woman and find out what she
+thinks of it and what she intends to do about
+it.” This is the old Bridegroom Fallacy—the
+notion, to paraphrase Miss Loos, that the bride
+is divine but that the bridegroom is just nothing.
+Unless more stress is laid, and pretty
+quickly, too, upon the complexity of the male,
+and the importance of what he is thinking about
+and what he intends to do, or at least what he
+would like to do, we are never going to arrive
+at a norm. How often do you hear it said that
+the little whims and desires of a man should be
+cherished, or even listened to? You don’t hear
+it said at all. What you do hear is that “the
+way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”
+A thing like that hardens a man. He may eat
+his spinach and say nothing, but he is being
+hardened just the same.</p>
+<div class="footnotes">
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_1_1" href="#FNanchor_1_1" class="label">[1]</a> <i>Marriage in the Modern Manner.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+<p>The American male, because of the remarkable
+stress laid upon women in this country, has
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxviii">[xxviii]</span>been understood least of all males. There has
+been no completely successful attempt to state
+his case until the authors of this extraordinary
+book came along. I do not know who they are.
+In places they do not seem to be themselves.
+But they’ve got something. (A lot of what they
+have they seem to have got from Zaner and
+Tithridge, which is all right with me.) At any
+rate, they state the case for the American man
+clearly and plausibly. At the same time they
+have by no means neglected the female. It takes
+two to make a neurosis, and nobody knows that
+any better than White and Thurber, unless it’s
+Zaner and Tithridge.</p>
+
+<p>Herein are examined, therefore, both men
+and women, male and female, Man and
+Woman—not only in themselves, but in their
+curious reactions to each other. The term
+“reaction” seems to be used in this book to include
+not only those quick, unpremeditated reflexes
+which cause so much trouble, but also
+those slowly formulated prejudices, doubts, and
+suspicions which cause even more trouble. If
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xxix">[xxix]</span>this book does anything at all toward straightening
+out the lamentable mess that things have
+got into in America—and I certainly think it
+will—the authors will feel amply repaid for
+their pains, which consisted in large part, they
+tell me, of insults.</p>
+
+<p>
+  <span class="smcap pad2">Lt. Col. H. R. L. Le Boutellier, C.I.E.</span><br>
+  <span class="smcap">Schlaugenschloss Haus,</span><br>
+  <span class="smcap">King’s Byway,</span><br>
+  <span class="smcap">Boissy-le-Doux sur Seine.</span><br>
+  <i>July 15, 1929</i>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center p4 pb4 fs150 wsp2">
+IS SEX NECESSARY?
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">
+    CHAPTER I
+<br>
+<br><span class="smcap">The Nature of the American Male:
+<br>A Study of Pedestalism</span> </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">In no</span> other civilized nation are the biological
+aspects of love so distorted and transcended
+by emphasis upon its sacredness as they
+are in the United States of America. In China
+it’s all biology. In France it’s a mixture of biology
+and humor. In America it’s half, or two-thirds,
+<i>psyche</i>. The Frenchman’s idea, by and
+large, is to get the woman interested in him as a
+male. The American idea is to point out, first of
+all, the great and beautiful part which the stars,
+and the infinite generally, play in Man’s relationship
+to women. The French, Dutch, Brazilians,
+Danes, etc., can proceed in their amours
+on a basis entirely divorced from the <i>psyche</i>.
+The Chinese give it no thought at all, and never
+have given it any thought. The American
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span>would be lost without the <i>psyche</i>, lost and a
+little scared.</p>
+
+<p>As a result of all this there is more confusion
+about love in America than in all the other
+countries put together. As soon as one gets the
+psychical mixed up with the physical—a thing
+which is likely to happen quite easily in a composing-room,
+but which should not happen anywhere
+else at all—one is almost certain to get
+appetite mixed up with worship. This is a
+whole lot like trying to play golf with a basketball,
+and is bound to lead to maladjustments.</p>
+
+<p>The phenomenon of the American male’s
+worship of the female, which is not so pronounced
+now as it was, but is still pretty pronounced,
+is of fairly recent origin. It developed,
+in fact, or reached its apex, anyway, in
+the early years of the present century. There
+was nothing like it in the preceding century.
+Throughout the nineteenth century the American
+man’s amatory instincts had been essentially
+economic. Marriage was basically a patriotic
+concern, the idea being to have children
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span>for the sake of the commonwealth. This was
+bad enough, but nevertheless it is far less dangerous
+to get the commonwealth mixed up with
+love than to get the infinite mixed up with love.</p>
+
+<p>There was not a single case of nervous breakdown,
+or neurosis, arising from amatory troubles,
+in the whole cycle from 1800 to 1900, barring
+a slight flare-up just before the Mexican
+and Civil wars. This was because love and
+marriage and children stood for progress, and
+progress is—or was—a calm, routine business.
+“Mrs. Hopkins,” a man would say to the lady
+of his choice (she was a widow in this case)—“Mrs.
+Hopkins, I am thinking, now that
+George&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_2_2" href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> has been dead a year, you and I should
+get married and have offspring. They are
+about to build the Union Pacific, you know,
+and they will need men.” Because parents
+can’t always have men-children when they want
+them, this led to almost as many women as men
+working on the Union Pacific, which in turn
+led to the greater stature of women in the present
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span>Northwest than in any other part of the
+nation. But that is somewhat beside the point.
+The point is that men and women, husbands
+and wives, suitors and sweethearts, in the last
+century lived without much sentiment and without
+any psycho-physical confusion at all. They
+missed a certain amount of fun, but they avoided
+an even greater amount of pother (see <a href="#GLOSSARY">Glossary</a>).
+They did not worry each other with
+emotional didoes. There was no hint of a
+Pleasure-Principle. Everything was empiric, almost
+somatic.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_3_3" href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+<div class="footnotes">
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_2_2" href="#FNanchor_2_2" class="label">[2]</a> The late George Hopkins.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_3_3" href="#FNanchor_3_3" class="label">[3]</a> The word “somatic” has been left out of the glossary because
+of the confusion which the dictionary itself seems to be in over the
+meaning of the term. “Pertaining to the wall of the body” is as
+close as the New International comes to what we have in mind
+here, but it goes right on to use “parietal” as a synonym and
+parietal means “pertaining to order within the buildings of a
+college.” Then again the word goes back to the old Indian, or
+East Indian, root <i>Soma</i> which means a god, a liquor, and an asclepiadaceous
+climbing shrub (<i lang="la">Sarcostemma acidum</i>). Furthermore, if
+your eyes stray even a fraction of an inch, in looking up “somatic,”
+you are in “sölvsbergite” which includes the feldspars, ægirite, grorudite,
+and tinguaite.</p></div></div>
+
+<p>This direct evasion of the Love Urge on the
+part of Americans of the last century was the
+nuclear complex of the psycho-neurosis as we
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span>know it today, and the basis for that remarkable
+reaction against patriotic sex which was to follow
+so soon after the Spanish-American war.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_c005" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c005.jpg"
+alt="Sketch of person at bat">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>Fig. 1.</i></p>
+      <p><i>Sex Substitutes (<span lang=de>Übertragung</span> Period): Baseball.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>At the turn of the century, the nation was on
+a sound economic basis and men had the opportunity
+to direct their attention away from the
+mechanics of life to the pleasures of living. No
+race can leap lightly, however, from an economic
+value to an emotional value. There must
+be a long period of <i lang="de">Übertragung</i>, long and tedious.
+Men were not aware of this, thirty years
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>ago, because the science of psychology was not
+far advanced, but nature came to their aid by
+supplying a temporary substitute for an emotional
+sex life, to tide them over during the
+period of <i lang="de">Übertragung</i>. This substitute took
+the form of games. Baseball assumed a
+new and enormous importance; prize-fighting
+reached its heyday; horse-racing became an absorption,
+bicycling a craze.</p>
+
+<p>Now women, naturally intraverts, could not
+easily identify themselves with baseball or prize-fighting
+(they admired Christy Mathewson and
+Terry McGovern, but that was about all); they
+took but slowly to horse-racing; and they giggled
+and acted the fool when they first tried to
+balance themselves on a bicycle. They drew
+away from men and from men’s concerns, therefore—there
+was no more of the old Union
+Pacific camaraderie—and began to surround
+the mere fact of their biological destiny with a
+nimbus of ineffability. It got so that in speaking
+of birth and other natural phenomena,
+women seemed often to be discussing something
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span>else, such as the Sistine Madonna or the
+aurora borealis. They became mysterious to
+themselves and to men; they became suddenly,
+in their own eyes, as capable of miracle and as
+worthy of worship as Juno and her sisters. This
+could not go on. The conflict was ineluctable.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp70" id="i_c007" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c007.jpg" alt="Sketch of person bowling.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>Fig. 2.</i></p>
+      <p><i>Sex Substitutes (<span lang=de>Übertragung</span> Period): Bowling.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>When men, wearied of games, turned to
+women with that urgency so notable in the
+American male for its simplicity and directness,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span>they found them unprepared for acceptance
+and surrender. The process of adjustment in
+courtship and in marriage became more involved
+than it had ever been before in the history of
+the country, if not in the history of the world.
+The new outdoors type of American man, with
+all his strength and impetuosity, was not easily
+to be put off. But the female, equipped with
+a Defense far superior in polymorphous ingenuities
+to the rather simple Attack of the
+male, was prepared. She developed and perfected
+the Diversion Subterfuge. Its purpose
+was to put Man in his place. Its first manifestation
+was fudge-making.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c009" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c009.jpg" alt="Sketch of woman in long dress at kitchen table, pots hand on the wall behind her. Man and dog sit on the floor looking disgruntled.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="center"><i>FUDGE-MAKING</i>.</p>
+      <p class="noindent">“<i>The female, equipped with a
+    Defense far superior in polymorphous
+    ingenuities to the
+    rather simple Attack of the
+    male, developed, and perfected,
+    the Diversion Subterfuge.
+    The first manifestation
+    of this remarkable phenomenon
+    was fudge-making.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The effectiveness of fudge-making in fending
+off the male and impressing him with the
+female’s divine unapproachability cannot be
+overestimated. Neither can its potentiality as
+a nuclear complex. The flitting from table to
+stove, the constant necessity of stirring the boiling
+confection, the running out-of-doors to see
+if the candy had cooled and hardened, served
+to abort any objective demonstrations at all on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>the part of the male. He met this situation with
+a strong Masculine Protest. He began to bring
+a box of candy with him when he called, so that
+there would not be any more fudge-making.
+These years constituted the great Lowney’s era
+in this country. Brought back to where she had
+started, face to face with the male’s simple desire
+to sit down and hold her, the female, still
+intent upon avoidance of the tactual, retaliated
+by suggesting Indoor Pastimes—one of the
+greatest of all Delay Mechanisms. All manner
+of parlor games came into being at this period,
+notably charades,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_4_4" href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> which called for the presence
+of other persons in the room (Numerical Protection).
+The American male’s repugnance to
+charades, which is equaled, perhaps, by his repugnance
+to nothing else at all, goes back to
+those years. The Masculine Protest, in this case,
+was a counter-suggestion of some games of his
+own, in which there was a greater possibility of
+personal contact. His first suggestions were
+quite primitive, such as that it would be fun to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>count up to a hundred by kissing. The female’s
+response was the famous one of Osculatory Justification.
+There must be, she decreed, more
+elaborate reasons for kissing than a mere exhibition
+of purposeless arithmetical virtuosity. Thus
+Post Office and Pillow were finally devised, as
+a sort of compromise. Neither was satisfactory
+to either sex. The situation became considerably
+strained and relationships finally trailed
+off into the even less satisfactory expedient of
+going for long rides on a tandem bicycle, which
+has had its serious effects upon the nature of the
+American man. He liked, for one thing, to do
+tricks on a bicycle. The contraption was new to
+him, and he wanted to do tricks on it. One
+trick that he liked especially was riding backwards.
+But there wasn’t one woman in ten
+thousand, riding frontwards on the rear seat of
+a tandem wheel, who would permit her consort
+to ride backwards on the front seat. The result
+of all this was not adjustment, but irritability.
+Man became frustrated.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_4_4" href="#FNanchor_4_4" class="label">[4]</a> See <a href="#GLOSSARY">Glossary</a>, definition No. (1).</p></div>
+</div>
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c013" >
+  <img class="illowp60" src="images/i_c013.jpg" alt="Sketch of two people on a bicycle.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="noindent">“<i>There wasn’t one woman in
+    ten thousand, riding frontwards
+    on the rear seat of a
+    tandem wheel, who would
+    permit her consort to ride
+    backwards on the front seat.
+    The result of all this was not
+    adjustment, but irritability.
+    Man became frustrated.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<p>Frustration wrought its inevitable results.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>Men began to act jumpy and strange. They
+were getting nowhere at all with women. The
+female gradually assumed, in men’s eyes, as she
+had in her own, the proportions of an unattainable
+deity, something too precious to be touched.
+The seed of Pedestalism was sown. The male,
+in a sort of divine discontent, began to draw
+apart by himself. This produced that separation
+of the physical and the psychic which causes
+the adult to remain in a state of suspended love,
+as if he were holding a bowl of goldfish and
+had nowhere to put it. This condition nowadays
+would lead directly to a neurosis, but in
+those days men were unable to develop a neurosis
+because they didn’t know how. Men
+withdrew, therefore, quietly and morosely, to
+their “dens.” It was the epoch of the den in
+America. Some marvelous ones sprang into
+being. Their contents were curiously significant.
+Deprived of possessing the female, the male
+worked off his Possessive Complex by collecting
+all manner of bibelots and bric-à-brac. The
+average den contained a paper-weight from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>Lookout Mountain, a jagged shell from <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note&mdash;original text: Chickamaugua" id="chicka">Chickamauga</ins>,
+a piece of wood from the <i>Maine</i>, pictures
+of baseball-players with beards, pictures of
+bicycle champions, a yellowing full-page photograph
+of Admiral Schley, a letter-opener from
+Niagara Falls, a lithograph of Bob Fitzsimmons,
+a musket-badge from the G. A. R. parade, a red
+tumbler from the state fair, a photograph of
+Julia Marlowe, a monk’s head match-holder, a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>Malay kriss, five pipe racks, a shark’s tooth, a
+starfish, a snapshot of the owner’s father’s bowling
+team, colored pictures of Natural Bridge
+and Balanced Rock, a leather table runner with
+an Indian chief on it, and the spangled jacket
+of a masquerade costume, softly shedding its
+sequins.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c016" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c016.jpg" alt="Sketch of two people playing craps.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>Fig. 3.</i></p>
+      <p><i>Sex Substitutes (<span lang=de>Übertragung</span> Period): Craps.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<p>The den was the beginning of male sublimation
+in this country, but the fruits of that sublimation
+were slow in ripening. At the start,
+in fact, they were in a state of absolute suspension.
+Man began to preoccupy himself with
+anything, no matter how trivial, which might
+help him to “forget,” as the lay expression has
+it. He thought up childish diversions, at which
+one person can amuse himself, and to justify his
+absorption in these futile pastimes he exaggerated
+their importance, as we shall see. These
+diversions included the diabolo, the jig-saw puzzle,
+linked nails and linked keys, which men
+took apart and put back together again, and
+most important of all, pigs-in-clover.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_c018" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c018.jpg" alt="Sketch of person riding a bicycle.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>Fig. 4.</i></p>
+      <p><i>Sex Substitutes (<span lang=de>Übertragung</span> Period): Six-day Bicycle Racing.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>During this period almost no achievements
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>of value, in art, science, or engineering, were
+forthcoming in the nation. Art, indeed, consisted
+chiefly of putting strange devices on boxes
+with the aid of a wood-burning set. The commonest
+device was the swastika, whose curiously
+distorted conformation bears no discernible
+relationship to any known phallic symbolism.
+Those years were blank, idle, lost years.
+Outside affairs of all kinds were neglected.
+Men retired to their dens and were not seen for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>days. The panic of 1907 was a direct result.
+It might be interesting to examine into a typical
+case history of the period.</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="CASE_HISTORY">
+  CASE HISTORY
+</h3>
+
+<p>George Smith, aged 32, real estate operator.
+Unmarried, lived with mother. No precocious
+mother fixation. Had freed his libido without
+difficulty from familial objects, and was eager
+to marry. Had formed an attachment in 1899,
+at the age of 29, with a young virgin. Her Protective
+Reactions had been immediate and lasted
+over a period of three years, during which he
+had never even held her hand. Defense Devices:
+usually euchre (four-handed), or pedro.
+Definite and frequent fudge-making subterfuge.
+Post Office and Pillow, both with low degree of
+success.</p>
+
+<p>Smith’s separation between the physical and
+the psychic occurred in 1902, the direct stimuli
+presenting themselves on June 6th of that year,
+examination (by Dr. Matthiessen) showed. On
+that day Smith ran, frightened, from a barber-shop
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>in Indianapolis, where he lived. Inside
+the shop, on the floor, a middle-aged man named
+Herschel Queeper had thrown a fit. Queeper
+had been trying for two days to get three little
+balls, under a glass in a tiny round box, to roll
+into an opening made for them (common pigs-in-clover
+puzzle). But no sooner would he get
+the third one in than one, or perhaps both, of
+the others would roll out. Mrs. Queeper was
+beginning to wonder where he was.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c021" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c021.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="center"><i>UNCONSCIOUS DRAWING:
+    PLATE&nbsp;I.</i></p>
+      <p class="noindent"><i>Unconscious drawings, as they
+    are called in psychoanalytical
+    terminology, are made by
+    people when their minds are
+    a blank. This drawing was
+    made by Floyd Neumann, of
+    South Norwalk. It represents
+    the Male Ego being importuned
+    by, but refusing to yield
+    to, Connecticut Beautiful.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Smith withdrew to his den and pondered and
+fiddled around and made Unconscious Drawings
+(Cf. Plates <a href="#i_c021">I</a>, <a href="#i_c027">II</a>, <a href="#i_c037">III</a> and <a href="#i_c047">IV</a>). He turned
+his attention from the object of his amorous
+affections to a consideration of the problems of
+pigs-in-clover. The usual Justification of Occupation
+occurred. It took the form of exaggerating
+the importance of finding out whether the
+puzzle could possibly be solved, and of working
+out a methodology of solving it more readily,
+if it could be solved at all. The case procured
+one of the little boxes and began to roll the balls
+toward the opening. At first he set about it
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>quite calmly. There were no immediate signs of
+mental deterioration, either malignant or benign.
+But although the case got all the balls
+into the opening, thus proving that it could be
+done, he never got them all in at the same time.
+In the second month he threw a brief fit. This,
+today, would ordinarily prove the first step toward
+a complete physico-psychic breakdown, but
+in those days neuroses were staved off longer,
+owing to the general ignorance of psychology,
+and Smith not only calmly examined the effect of
+the fit upon himself, without calling in any
+scientists, but determined to go on and examine
+the effects of fits upon others. He decided,
+however, that it would be difficult to
+examine the effects of puzzle-fits upon men, because
+men brooked no examination when they
+were intent upon puzzles, and so he hit on the
+idea of having his dog, an animal named
+Dewey, play with the little round box until it
+threw a fit. But when he called in his dog he
+found, after several experiments, that the dog
+could not hold the box in either its right or left
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>paw.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_5_5" href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Furthermore, the animal was profoundly
+incurious about the puzzle.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_6_6" href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_5_5" href="#FNanchor_5_5" class="label">[5]</a> This presented a difficulty that has not been overcome to this
+day.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_6_6" href="#FNanchor_6_6" class="label">[6]</a> This disinterest held good up until the day of the dog’s death.</p></div>
+</div>
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c024" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c024.jpg" alt="Sketch of man offering a treat to a dog.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p>“<i>Furthermore, the animal was profoundly incurious about
+    the puzzle.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Undismayed, Smith decided that somewhere
+in Indianapolis there must be a dog adroit
+enough to handle the box and sagacious enough
+to grasp the idea behind it, and with a view to
+finding such an animal, he determined to get all
+the dogs in town, and all the pigs-in-clover puzzles
+in town, into one room and see what would
+happen. (Apotheosis Complex, with Plurality
+Fallacy.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span></p>
+
+<p>Smith was able, however, to round up only
+about 85 per cent of the dogs of the city, because
+there were many who were too busy to get
+away at the time. Even so, 85 per cent of the
+dogs in Indianapolis was more than had ever
+been got together in one room before. The
+case attempted to explain the problem to the
+dogs in short, one-syllable talks, but the bedlam
+was too loud and too prolonged for him to
+make himself heard. Fifty or more St. Bernards
+and a few dozen Chesapeake spaniels listened,
+half-heartedly, but the others made holiday.
+Furthermore, eighty-four bulldogs would not
+permit themselves to be muzzled, and this added
+to Smith’s difficulties. Thus, on the fifth day
+of the singular experiment, Smith, hearing a remarkable
+hullaballoo belowstairs (he worked
+in the attic), descended to the parlor, where he
+discovered the bulldogs engaged in a sort of
+tug-of-war, using a body Brussels carpet as a
+rope. (The case’s mother had several days before
+retreated to French Lick, in a rundown condition.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span></p>
+
+<p>Smith grasped the carpet firmly, with some
+idea of wresting it away from the dogs, whereupon
+all of them save three began to pull against
+him.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_7_7" href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> The Exaggeration Complex under which
+the case was laboring gave him strength enough
+to meet with some small success in his first
+efforts to take the carpet away from the dogs.
+He pulled them as far as the bay window in
+the parlor, largely because they had not settled
+down seriously to winning. When they did,
+however, the total of three hundred and twenty-four
+solidly implanted feet and the virtually immeasurable
+tugging potentiality were too much
+for Smith. He was slowly pulled out into the
+hall, through the front door, and into the street.
+He stubbornly contested every inch of the way
+until a drug store, three blocks away, was
+reached. Here some one had the presence of
+mind to call out the fire department.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_7_7" href="#FNanchor_7_7" class="label">[7]</a> These three had closed their eyes, to hang on, and did not see
+Smith.</p></div></div>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c027" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c027.jpg" alt="Sketch of curled up male form, and smaller, but upright female form with arms reaching upwards.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="center"><i>UNCONSCIOUS DRAWING:
+    PLATE&nbsp;II.</i></p>
+      <p class="noindent"><i>This was drawn by Peter Zinsner,
+    564 DeKalb Avenue,
+    Brooklyn, without knowing it.
+    We here see Sublimation in
+    conflict with the Libido. Peter
+    has reached a point in life
+    where women seem so divine
+    he doesn’t dare call them up
+    on the phone. Yet</i> they <i>still
+    call</i> him.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Dr. Matthiessen, who took the case at about
+this period in its development, attempted to reduce
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>the Magnification of Objective, first by
+Analytic Reasoning, and then by cold applications.
+Neither was successful. Matthiessen
+could not divert the libido. Smith declined to
+resume his interest in the feminine object of his
+affections, and insisted that his experiment with
+puzzles was a glorious project for the benefit
+of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>It was sheer accident that saved the patient—not
+Dr. Matthiessen. Smith finally refused Dr.
+Matthiessen admittance to his house, nor would
+he go to the doctor’s office, claiming that he did
+not believe in psychology, but one day he
+dropped one of the little pigs-in-clover puzzles
+and broke the glass in it. He then found that
+he did not have to roll the balls into the openings,
+<i>but could push them in with his finger</i>.
+He got a hammer and broke the glass in all the
+thousands of puzzles he had brought to his
+home for the dogs, and solved every one of
+the puzzles by pushing, not rolling. This instantly
+released him from his complex by the
+Gordian Knot principle of complex release. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>thus gained the necessary confidence and sense
+of power to feel worthy of the woman with
+whom he was in love, and he finally married her.
+The marriage was of average success.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c031" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c031.jpg" alt="Sketch of cat jumping between two chair backs, man looks in from door behind.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="noindent"><i>This drawing was made from
+    an old 1901 lantern slide
+    often used by Dr. Karl Zaner
+    in his illustrated lecture,
+    “What Can We Learn from
+    Animals?” Dr. Zaner has always
+    contended that we can
+    learn nothing of importance
+    from animals beyond a few
+    pointers on the art of relaxation.
+    “Their general activities
+    are, as a rule, not only
+    meaningless to man, but frequently
+    to themselves as well.
+    This particular cat, for example,
+    probably had nothing
+    special in mind at all.”</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Marriages, however, were frequently delayed
+much longer than in the case of George Smith,
+and it was not, indeed, until 1909 that the usual
+norm was restored. Meanwhile, in between the
+time of the first general separation of the physical
+and the psychic in this country, and the final
+culmination in marriages, a period of sublimation
+set in. This followed directly on the heels
+of the remarkable and lamentable era of preoccupation
+with trivial diversions and was characterized
+by an extravert interest in truly important
+projects and activities. The airplane
+was brought to a high stage of development,
+the telephone transmitter was perfected, tungsten
+replaced carbon as a filament for incandescent
+lamps, better books were written, art
+progressed, there was a cultural advance generally
+and the birth of a new Æsthetic, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>people began to get at the real facts in the Thaw
+case. Nevertheless, Pedestalism has left its
+serious effects. It is doubtful if they will fully
+wear off for another fifty or seventy-five years.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp70" id="i_c033" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c033.jpg"
+alt="Sketch of dog running.">
+</figure>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">
+    CHAPTER II
+<br><br><span class="smcap">How to Tell Love from Passion</span>
+ </h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">At a</span> certain point in every person’s amours,
+the question arises: “Am I in love, or am I
+merely inflamed by passion?”</p>
+
+<p>It is a disturbing question. Usually it arises
+at some inopportune moment: at the start of
+a letter, in the middle of an embrace, at the
+end of a day in the country. If the person could
+supply a direct, simple, positive answer—if he
+could say convincingly, “I am in love,” or, “This
+is not love, this is passion”—he would spare
+himself many hours of mental discomfort. Almost
+nobody can arrive at so simple a reply.
+The conclusion a man commonly arrives at, after
+tossing the argument about, is something after
+this fashion: “I am in love, all right, but just
+the same I don’t like the way I looked at Miriam
+last night.” Or, “Mirabel is a tidy little wench,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>and in that case why do I waste time composing
+a quatrain for her, to be sent with a crushed
+spray of lilac? Why don’t I just go right over?”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c035" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c035.jpg" alt="Sketch of man seated in char, a woman is seated on the floor between his knees, her legs stretch out under the chair.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p>“<i>At a certain point in every person’s amours, the question arises:<br>
+    ‘Am I in love, or am I merely inflamed by passion?’</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>One reason a man has trouble telling love
+from passion is because neither term has been
+clearly defined. Even after one has experienced
+love, one finds difficulty defining it. Likewise,
+one may define it and then have all kinds of
+trouble experiencing it, because, once having defined
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>it, one is in too pompous a frame of mind
+ever again to submit to its sweet illusion. By
+and large, love is easier to experience before it
+has been explained—easier and cleaner. The
+same holds true of passion. Understanding the
+principles of passion is like knowing how to
+drive a car; once mastered, all is smoothed out;
+no more does one experience the feeling of perilous
+adventure, the misgivings, the diverting
+little hesitancies, the wrong turns, the false
+starts, the glorious insecurity. All is smoothed
+out, and all, so to speak, is lost.</p>
+
+<p>The word “love” is used loosely by writers,
+and they know it. Furthermore, the word
+“love” is accepted loosely by readers, and <i>they</i>
+know it. There are many kinds of love, but
+for the purposes of this article I shall confine
+my discussion to the usual hazy interpretation:
+the strange bewilderment which overtakes one
+person on account of another person. Thus,
+when I say love in this article, you will take it
+to mean <i>the pleasant confusion which we know
+exists</i>. When I say passion, I <i>mean</i> passion.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c037" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c037.jpg" alt="Sketch of frowning woman with hands under her chin, small figure of a man stands on one of her arms.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="center"><i>UNCONSCIOUS DRAWING:
+    PLATE&nbsp;III.</i></p>
+      <p class="noindent"><i>This is the work of Grace McFadden,
+    aged 11, of Bucyrus,
+    Ohio (R. F. D. # 3, Bucyrus
+    6021, Ring 3), and was drawn
+    on the day that Principal K.
+    L. Mooney, of the Paulding
+    County Concentration Grade
+    Schools, was married. Here
+    the Pleasure-Principle and the
+    Wish Motive are both overshadowed
+    by the Bridegroom
+    Fallacy.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span></p>
+
+<p>I have mentioned that the question of deciding
+whether a feeling be love or passion arises
+at inopportune moments, such as at the start of
+a letter. Let us say you have sat down to write
+a letter to your lady. There has been a normal
+amount of preparation for the ordeal, such as
+clearing a space on the desk (in doing which
+you have become momentarily interested in a
+little article in last month’s <i>Scribner’s</i> called,
+“Plumbing the Savage,” and have stood for a
+minute reading the first page and deciding to let
+it go), and the normal amount of false alarms,
+such as sitting down and discovering that you
+have no cigarettes. (Note: if you think you can
+write the letter without cigarettes, it is not love,
+it is passion.) Finally you get settled and you
+write the words; “Anne darling.” If you like
+commas, you put a comma after “darling”; if
+you like colons, a colon; if dashes, a dash. If
+you don’t care <i>what</i> punctuation mark you put
+after “darling,” the chances are you are in love—although
+you may just be uneducated, who
+knows?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span></p>
+
+<p>Now, you have written the words “Anne darling”
+and have put a punctuation mark there.
+You pause for just a second, and in that second
+you are lost. “Darling?” you say to yourself.
+“Darling? Is she my darling, or isn’t she?
+And if she <i>is</i> my darling, as I have so brazenly
+set down on this sheet of paper, what caused me
+to take such a long, critical look at the girl in
+the red-and-brown scarf this morning when I
+was breakfasting in the Brevoort? If I can be
+all aglow about a girl in a red-and-brown scarf
+in the early morning, is Anne my darling, or am
+I just kidding myself?”</p>
+
+<p>Then follows a brief estimate of the comparative
+beauty of Anne and the girl in the scarf,
+with the girl in the scarf coming out half a
+length ahead. This is followed by a short dialogue
+which you hold with yourself.</p>
+
+<p>“What if she <i>was</i> prettier?” you say. “What
+does that amount to? I’m not a child. I know
+there’s more to the story than mere physical
+beauty.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c041" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c041.jpg" alt="Sketch of two men crawling in opposite directions, waving to each other.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="center"><i>AMERICAN MALE
+    POSTURES: PLATE&nbsp;I.</i></p>
+      <p class="noindent"><i>American men, more than any
+    others, permit the complexities
+    of the psycho-physical world
+    to get them down. Often,
+    while down, they will pass
+    each other going somewhere,
+    and exchange a small greeting.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span></p>
+
+<p>“What more is there?” you quietly demand,
+testing yourself out.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, there’s quality of mind, and community
+of interest, and chemical attraction (chemical attraction
+is a term you’ve picked up recently from
+reading books on sex and life). When I get
+right down to it, if I were to meet that girl in
+the scarf, I probably wouldn’t like her.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, but you want to meet her, all the samey,
+don’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well ... I mean ... a man can’t; I
+mean....”</p>
+
+<p>“Yah, you know you want to meet her!”</p>
+
+<p>“Aw, shut up!”</p>
+
+<p>Having got nowhere with that theme, you
+again bend to the mighty task of writing the
+first sentence of the letter. A minute or two
+of quiet brooding and the truth comes to you
+that you have nothing to say, that you wrote
+all the news yesterday, that you consider it pretty
+silly to be writing another letter so soon, and
+that if anyone were to ask you, you don’t really
+want to write Anne a letter at all.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Well, so that’s the way the wind blows!”
+you say to yourself, contemptuously. “So
+<i>that’s</i> the way things are between Anne and
+you! Not wanting to write her. So it’s come
+to that. Well, it’s about time you got wise to
+yourself. If you don’t love Anne it’s certainly
+high time you found it out, in justice to both
+Anne and yourself. In other words, you never
+loved Anne at all—you merely gave in to an infatuation.
+You were thinking about the physical
+side of the affair; yes, sir, you <i>desired</i> Anne,
+that’s what you did. You <i>desired</i> her! Why,
+you dirty, low-down, two-faced old voluptuary
+you....”</p>
+
+<p>The utter shame of this situation breaks your
+spirit and you lay down your pen, light up a
+cigarette, and pace up and down the room.
+Suddenly you dash to the desk, with a look of
+woeful determination, seize the pen, and write
+(after the words “Anne darling,” which are
+good and dry by this time): “I have been wanting
+to tell you something for a long time. We
+must look things straight in the face, Anne.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>You then look things straight in the face for ten
+minutes, during which you don’t write a word,
+and end by tearing the letter up and quickly
+dashing off another, which reads: “Anne, I’m
+awfully tired tonight, nervous, etc., and if I
+wrote you it would just be a bunch of hooey, so
+think I will wait till tomorrow before writing.
+Love, Bert.” This you mail at the corner and
+spend the rest of the evening trying to read
+“Plumbing the Savage,” which results finally in
+sleep—sleep troubled by dreams of savages
+wearing loin cloths of a familiar red-and-brown
+material.</p>
+
+<p>This vexing disbelief in one’s own illusion of
+love is experienced most alarmingly by persons
+of literary inclinations. Yet with them the reaction
+comes in quite the opposite manner.
+Writing is a form of sexual expression (Zaner
+goes further: he says writing <i>is</i> sex), and it takes
+just as much out of a person. Thus, a person
+with a bent for creative literature approaches
+the task of writing a love letter with an excitation
+of the spirit surpassing anything in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>realm of pure eroticism. He anticipates it for
+hours, mulling over in his mind the possible
+material, enlarging on anecdotes, rounding off
+pledges of affection, sharpening similes, sharpening
+pencils; he comes to the writing of it with
+immense zeal and a rather nice control of lyrical
+prose; he ends on a splendidly poised and
+correctly balanced note of tenderness and faith
+and love; and then, having signed, sealed, and
+posted the missive, is suddenly overcome by the
+realization that by the very act of composition he
+has annulled the allure of the subject herself—cares
+no more about her, for the moment, than
+he does for an old piece of butcher’s twine,
+which, all in all, is so alarming a discovery that
+he usually gets a little bit sick thinking about it,
+and has to go out somewhere and hear some
+music.</p>
+
+<p>I have seldom met an individual of literary
+tastes or propensities in whom the writing of
+love was not directly attributable to the love
+of writing.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c047" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c047.jpg" alt="Sketch of the head and arms of a large man, looking down at a dolls sized figure of a woman facing away from him.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="center"><i>UNCONSCIOUS DRAWING:
+    PLATE&nbsp;IV.</i></p>
+      <p class="noindent"><i>The mood captured in this
+    drawing is a rare one indeed,
+    and Dr. Karl Zaner considers
+    the sketch the finest in his
+    collection. Here the masculine
+    sense of Ironic Detachment
+    rises superior to the Love
+    Urge and can take it or let
+    it alone. The drawing was
+    sent to Dr. Zaner by Mrs.
+    Walter L. Mouse (née Kathleen
+    Schaaf), recently divorced
+    wife of the author of the
+    drawing, Walter L. Mouse, of
+    Columbus, Ohio.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>A person of this sort falls terribly in love,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>but in the end it turns out that he is more bemused
+by a sheet of white paper than a sheet
+of white bed linen. He would rather leap into
+print with his lady than leap into bed with her.
+(This first pleases the lady and then annoys her.
+She wants him to do both, and with virtually the
+same impulse.)</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="UNCERTAINTY_IN_THE_MIDDLE_OF_AN_EMBRACE">
+  UNCERTAINTY IN THE MIDDLE OF AN EMBRACE
+</h3>
+
+<p>There is no more disturbing experience in the
+rich gamut of life than when a young man discovers,
+in the midst of an embrace, that he is
+taking the episode quite calmly and is taking
+the kiss for what it is worth. His doubts and
+fears start from this point and there is no end
+to them. He doesn’t know whether it’s love or
+passion. In fact, in the confusion of the moment
+he’s not quite sure it isn’t something else,
+like forgery. He certainly doesn’t see how it
+can be love.</p>
+
+<p>Let us examine this incident. He has been
+sitting, we’ll say, on a porch with his beloved.
+They have been talking of this and that, with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>the quiet intimacy of lovers. After a bit he
+takes her in his arms and kisses her—not once,
+but several times. It is not a new experience to
+him; he has had other girls, and he has had
+plenty of other kisses from this one. This time,
+however, something happens. The young man,
+instead of losing himself in the kiss, <i>finds</i> himself
+in it. What’s more, the girl to him loses her
+identity—she becomes just anyone on whom he
+is imposing his masculinity. Instead of his soul
+being full of the ecstasy which is traditionally
+associated with love’s expression, his soul is just
+fiddling around. The young man is thinking
+to himself:</p>
+
+<p>“Say, this is pretty nice now!”</p>
+
+<p>Well, that scares him. Up to this point in
+the affair he has been satisfied that his feeling
+was that of love. Now he doesn’t know what
+to think. In all his life he has never come across
+a character in a book or a movie who, embracing
+his beloved, was heard to say, “This is
+pretty nice,” except that character was a villain.
+He becomes a mass of conflicting emotions, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>is so thoroughly skeptical and worried about the
+state of his heart that he will probably take to
+reading sociological books to find out if it’s
+O.K. to go ahead, or whether, as a gentleman,
+it’s his duty to step out before he further defames
+a sweet girl and soils her womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>The medical profession recognizes two distinct
+types of men: first, the type that believes
+that to love a woman is not to desire her; second,
+the type that believes that to desire a
+woman is not to love her. The medical profession
+rests.</p>
+
+<p>This young man whom I’ve just mentioned
+(the rogue who found himself having a good
+time in the midst of a kiss) now takes seriously
+to books. Matters go from bad to worse. Hoping
+to find, in sexology, some explanation for
+his conduct which would indicate that, if not
+decent, it at least was not without precedent,
+he searches relentlessly until he comes upon a
+chapter on “The Theory of the Libido.” (Note:
+it makes any young man a little mad to discover
+that he has a <i>pleasure-principle</i>, but there it is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>just the same.) On page 464 he finds this paragraph:</p>
+
+<p>“The ideal healthy outcome is to find the child
+in whom the process of repression has been accomplished
+with no fixations of interest at lower
+stages of adaptation, in whom the Œdipus complex
+has passed into a ‘normal’ phase of the
+castration complex inhibition, and in whom a
+free-movable libido is developing sublimation
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>in active interests free from paralyzing inhibitions
+or anti-social tendencies.”</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c052" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c052.jpg" alt="Sketch of man sitting with poor posture on the edge of a chair.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>This peculiar posture was discovered by Dr. Tithridge
+    in a patient who for thirty years, boy and man, had been
+    unable to tell love from passion and who allowed it to
+    prey on his mind. Drawing from the Tithridge collection
+    of American male postures.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>This brings the young man to the point where
+he thinks maybe he better lay off altogether. He
+just wasn’t cut out for kissing, he guesses. So
+he writes his girl a letter apologizing for having
+been a beast, breaks the engagement, and goes
+out to Oregon, where he raises fruit fairly successfully
+and with no anti-social tendencies.</p>
+
+<p>I have taken up the question of Man’s uncertainty
+about love and passion in two different
+circumstances—at the start of a letter, and in
+the middle of an embrace. It was originally my
+intention also to show how this uncertainty overcomes
+one <i>at the end of a day in the country</i>
+when a man is so tired that he not only can’t
+distinguish love from passion, but has all he can
+do to distinguish one station on the New Haven
+railroad from another and often gets out at
+125th Street by mistake. I say this was my intention;
+but thus far I have been so unsuccessful
+in explaining the difference between love and
+passion that to go on would be to lay myself
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>open to criticism. The fact of the matter is, it’s
+very difficult to tell love from passion. My advice
+to anyone who doesn’t feel sure of the difference
+between them is either to give them
+both up or quit trying to split hairs.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">
+    CHAPTER III
+<br>
+<br><span class="smcap">A Discussion of Feminine Types</span>
+</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">In speaking</span> of the weaker sex in this book,
+the authors usually confine themselves to the
+generalization “Woman,” “women,” and “the
+female.” For the larger discussions of sex, these
+comprehensive terms suffice. Yet no examination
+of the pitiable problem of Man and Woman
+would be complete without some effort to define
+a few of the more important types of the female.
+One cannot say, “Oh, well, you know how
+women are,” and let it go at that. Many truths
+apply, and many foibles are common, to the
+whole sex, but the varieties of the female of the
+species are as manifold as the varieties of the
+flower called the cineraria.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c056" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c056.jpg" alt="Sketch of a man carrying a woman, face up, slung over his shoulder.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p>“<i>Successfully to deal with a woman, a man must know
+    what type she is.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Successfully to deal with a woman, a man
+must know what type she is. There have been
+several methods of classification, none of which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>I hold thoroughly satisfactory, neither the glandular
+categories—the gonoid, thyroid, etc.—nor
+the astrological—Sagittarius, Virgo, Pisces, and
+so on. One must be pretty expert to tell a good
+gonoid when he sees one. Personally, I know
+but very little about them, nor if I had a vast
+knowledge would I know what to do with it. It
+is even more difficult, and just as unimportant,
+to arrive at a zodiacal classification, because that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>is altogether dependent upon determining the
+year the woman was born, and because, even if
+you should ascertain her date of birth, the pish-tosh
+of analysis and prediction which derives
+therefrom is a lot of mediæval guesswork. Or
+so it seems to me, and to Zaner, Blifil, Gorley,
+Peschkar, Rittenhouse, and Matthiessen.</p>
+
+<p>Of much greater importance is a classification
+of females by actions. It comes out finally, the
+nature of a woman, in what she does—her little
+bag of tricks, as one might say.</p>
+
+<p>A type of which one hears a great deal but
+which has never been very ably or scientifically
+analyzed, for the guidance of men, is the Quiet
+Type. How often one hears the warning, “Look
+out for the Quiet Type.” Let us see if we
+should look out for it, and why.</p>
+
+<p>The element of menace in the Quiet Type is
+commonly considered very great. Yet if one
+asks a man who professes knowledge of the
+type, why one should look out for it, one gets
+but a vague answer. “Just look out, that’s all,”
+he usually says. When I began my researches I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>was, in spite of myself, somewhat inhibited by
+an involuntary subscription to this legendary
+fear. I found it difficult to fight off a baseless
+alarm in the presence of a lady of subdued manner.
+Believing, however, that the best defense
+is an offense, I determined to carry the war,
+as it were, into the enemy’s country. The first
+Quiet Type, or Q.T., that I isolated was a young
+woman whom I encountered at a Sunday tea
+party. She sat a little apart from the rest of the
+group in a great glazed chintz, I believe it was,
+chair. Her hands rested quietly on the chair
+arms. She kept her chin rather down than up,
+and had a way of lifting her gaze slowly, without
+disturbing the set of her chin. She moved
+but twice, once to put by a cup of tea and once
+to push back a stray lock from her forehead. I
+stole glances at her from time to time, trying
+to make them appear ingenuous and friendly
+rather than bold or suggestive, an achievement
+rendered somewhat troublesome by an unfortunate
+involuntary winking of the left eyelid
+to which I am unhappily subject.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span></p>
+
+<p>I noted that her eyes, which were brown, had
+a demure light in them. She was dressed simply
+and was quite pretty. She spoke but once
+or twice, and then only when spoken to. In a
+chance shifting of the guests to an adjacent room
+to examine, I believe, some water colors, I was
+left quite alone with her. Steeling myself for
+an ordeal to which I am unused—or was at the
+time—I moved directly to her side and grasped
+her hand. “Hallo, baby! Some fun—hah?”
+I said—a method of attack which I had devised
+in advance. She was obviously shocked, and instantly
+rose from her chair and followed the
+others into the next room. I never saw her
+again, nor have I been invited to that little home
+since. Now for some conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>Patently, this particular Q.T., probably due
+to an individual variation, was not immediately
+dangerous in the sense that she would seize an
+opportunity, such as I offered her, to break up
+the home of, or at least commit some indiscretion
+with, a man who was obviously—I believe I
+may say—a dependable family man with the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>average offhand attractions. Dr. White has
+criticized my methodology in this particular
+case, a criticism which I may say now, in all
+good humor, since the danger is past, once
+threatened to interpose insuperable obstacles, of
+a temperamental nature, in the way of this collaboration.
+It was his feeling that I might just
+as well have removed one of the type’s shoes as
+approach her the way I did. I cannot hold
+with him there. Neither, I am gratified to say,
+can Zaner, but in fairness to White it is only
+just to add that Tithridge can.</p>
+
+<p>However, the next Q.T. that I encountered I
+placed under observation more gradually. I
+used to see her riding on a Fifth Avenue bus, always
+at a certain hour. I took to riding on this
+bus also, and discreetly managed to sit next her
+on several occasions. She eventually noticed
+that I appeared to be cultivating her and eyed
+me quite candidly, with a look I could not at
+once decipher. I could now, but at that time I
+couldn’t. I resolved to put the matter to her
+quite frankly, to tell her, in fine, that I was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>studying her type and that I wished to place her
+under closer observation. Therefore, one evening,
+I doffed my hat and began.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp60" id="i_c061" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c061.jpg" alt="Sketch of face of woman with short hair.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>The Quiet Type.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>“Madam,” I said, “I would greatly appreciate
+making a leisurely examination of you, at
+your convenience.” She struck me with the
+palm of her open hand, got up from her seat,
+and descended at the next even-numbered
+street—Thirty-sixth, I believe it was.</p>
+
+<p>I may as well admit here and now that personally
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>I enjoyed at no time any great success
+with Q.T’s. I think one may go as far as to say
+that any scientific examination of the Quiet
+Type, as such, is out of the question. I know
+of no psychologist who has ever got one alone
+long enough to get anywhere. (Tithridge has
+averred that he began too late in life; Zaner
+that he does not concur in the major premise.)
+The Quiet Type is not amenable to the advances
+of scientific men when the advances are of a
+scientific nature, and also when they are of any
+other nature. Indeed, it is one of the unfortunate
+handicaps to psychological experimentation
+that many types of women do not lend
+themselves readily to purposeful study. As one
+woman said to me, “It all seems so mapped out,
+kind of.”</p>
+
+<p>I am a little reluctant to report one other adventure
+with the Quiet Type, and that is why
+I seem to have summed up in the preceding
+paragraph without mentioning it. However, I
+now feel that some brief outline of the case I
+have alluded to should be set down here—especially
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>after all this allusion. This young lady
+was a guest at a week-end party where I was also
+a guest. On Saturday evening it began to appear,
+quite early, that there was going to be
+considerable drinking. And, to be sure, there
+was. Among those who became, as the fellow
+said, a little bit uncertain of themselves, were
+the young Q.T. and myself. It was, in all truth,
+largely her fault that I reached a state of abandon
+from which, at her further solicitation, it
+was but an easy step to a feeling of sheer devil-may-care.
+This condition, it is perhaps unnecessary
+to say, militates against that fine precision
+of mind so essential to the best results in any
+scientific investigation.</p>
+
+<p>I do not remember all that ensued one-half
+so clearly as I should like to. I have often
+thought deeply on the matter, striving to reconstruct
+the complete scene, as it were, but my efforts
+have been hampered by the lamentable fact
+that I found dwelling upon the more easily
+remembered scenes so delightful that I simply
+dwelt on them. I remember, for example, that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>I was at the piano, or more exactly, on it—standing
+on it. The Quiet Type, fearing that I
+might fall, grasped me firmly about the knees,
+and I did fall. I was not only uninjured, but I
+got to my feet laughing. At this she began to
+laugh. I had lost my glasses in the fall, and
+began hunting for them. In bending over, however,
+I was assailed by a slight touch of vertigo,
+which runs in my family, and fell again.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c064" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c064.jpg" alt="Sketch of man and woman embracing in a field with flowers.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>I asked her how I had reached the cliff—if I had walked
+    there. “Partly,” she said.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span></p>
+
+<p>The next that I remember is sitting on the
+edge of a cliff, or <i lang="fr">falaise</i>, as the French call it,
+looking out over a lake. The young lady was
+beside me. “Well,” she said, “what shall we do
+next?” I asked her how I had reached the cliff—if
+I had walked there. “Partly,” she said.
+This set me to thinking. “I have lost my
+glasses,” I said, and began hunting for them
+again. She again seized me by the knees, and I
+fell. In falling, both of us became enormously
+involved. I instantly arose and was about to
+step into the lake, when she grasped me around
+the waist. We both sat down. “You have
+gone as far as you can,” she said, and tittered.
+“I should like to go a little farther,” said I. She
+arose. “You’re a funny man,” she said, and
+laughed again. I grasped her, much to my surprise,
+by one ankle, and she began to topple toward
+the lake. I fell heavily backward, pulling
+her with me, and this doubtless saved her life.
+“You must be more careful,” I told her. We sat
+up. “Don’t you think you better take me
+home?” she said, in a singular voice—low and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>odd. “Rather,” I responded, and arose. I took
+her back to the house, which was some half-mile
+distant, we joined the others, and that is all I
+remember.</p>
+
+<p>I shall always regret, of course, that I did not
+have full possession of my faculties during the
+walk to the cliff’s edge, for there might have
+been, in the ten or fifteen minutes it must have
+taken, an excellent opportunity to “get at” the
+young woman. There is nothing quite so provocative
+of pleasant, revelatory talk as a quiet
+walk with some one at night. However, the episode
+ended as I have said, and a golden opportunity
+was lost.</p>
+
+<p>In my very failures I made, I believe, certain
+significant findings in regard to the Quiet
+Type. It is not dangerous to men, but to a particular
+man. Apparently it lies in wait for some
+one individual and gets him. Being got by this
+special type, or even being laid in wait for,
+would seem to me in some cases not without its
+pleasurable compensations. Wherein, exactly,
+the menace lies, I have no means of knowing.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>I have my moments when I think I see what it
+is, but I have other moments when I think I
+don’t.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i_c067" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c067.jpg" alt="Sketch of a profile of woman with short, bobbed, hair.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>The Buttonhole-twister Type.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The Buttonhole-twister Type is much easier
+to come at. A girl of this persuasion works quite
+openly. She has the curious habit of insinuating
+a finger, usually the little finger of the right
+hand, unless she be left-handed, into the lapel
+buttonhole of a gentleman, and twisting it.
+Usually, she picks out a man who is taller than
+herself and usually she gets him quite publicly,
+in parks, on street corners, and the like. Often,
+while twisting, she will place the toe of her right
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>shoe on the ground, with the heel elevated, and
+will swing the heel slowly through an arc of
+about thirty or thirty-five degrees, back and
+forth. This manifestation is generally accompanied
+by a wistful, far-away look on the
+woman’s face, and she but rarely gazes straight
+at the man. She invariably goes in for negative
+statements during the course of her small writhings,
+such as “It is not,” “I am not,” “I don’t
+believe you do,” and the like. This type is
+demonstrative in her affections and never lies
+in wait with any subtlety. She is likely to be
+restless and discontented with the married state,
+largely because she will want to go somewhere
+that her husband does not want to go, or will
+not believe he has been to the places that he says
+he just came from. It is well to avoid this type.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c069" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c069.jpg" alt="Sketch of man laying on the ground raised up on his arms, a woman sits on his back covering his eyes with her hands.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>I am told that one type has actually been known to get
+    the man of her choice down and sit, as it were, side-saddle
+    of him.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>A charming but altogether dangerous type is
+the “Don’t, dear” Type. By assuming a middle
+of the road, this way and that way, attitude toward
+a gentleman’s advances, she will at once
+allure and repulse him. The man will thus be
+twice allured. He calls on her, and they sit
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>in the porch swing, let us say. When he slips
+his arm around her, she will say in a low tone,
+“Don’t, dear.” No matter what he does, she
+will say, “Don’t, dear.” This type is a homemaker.
+Unless the man wants a home made for
+him within a very short time, it is better for him
+to observe the “don’t” rather than the “dear,”
+and depart. The type is common in the Middle
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>West, particularly in university towns, or was
+some few years ago, at any rate. Any effort to
+classify modern university types would be difficult
+and confusing. They change from year to
+year, and vary with the region. I am told that
+one type has actually been known to get the
+man of her choice down and sit, as it were,
+side-saddle of him. I would not give even this
+brief mention, in passing, to college types of
+the female, were they not important because they
+so frequently divert a man from his career and
+tie him down before he has a chance to begin
+working, or even to say anything.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the types of American women,
+such as the Outdoors, the Clinging Vine, and
+so on and so on, are too generally known to
+need any special comment here. If a man does
+not know one when he sees it, or cannot tell
+one from another, of these more common types,
+there is little that can be done for him. No
+man should contemplate marriage, or even
+mingle with women, unless he has a certain
+measure of intuition about these more obvious
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>types. For example, if a man could not tell
+instantly that a woman was the sort that would
+keep him playing tennis, or riding horseback,
+all afternoon, and then expect him to ride back
+and forth all night on the ferry, no amount of
+description of the Outdoors Type would be of
+any avail.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, one phenomenal modern
+type, a product of these strange post-war years,
+which will bear a brief analysis. This is the
+type represented by the girl who gets right down
+to a discussion of sex on the occasion of her
+first meeting with a man, but then goes on to
+betray a great deal of alarm and aversion to the
+married state. This is the “I-can’t-go-through-with-it”
+Type. Many American virgins fall
+within this classification. Likewise it contains
+women who have had some strange and bitter
+experience about which they do a great deal of
+hinting but which they never clearly explain. If
+involved with, or even merely presented to, a
+woman of this type, no man in his right mind
+will do anything except reach for his hat.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>Science does not know what is the matter with
+these women, or whether anything is the matter.
+A lot of reasons have been advanced for girls
+acting in this incredible, dismayed manner—eleven
+reasons in all, I believe—but no one
+really knows very much about it. It may be their
+mothers’ teaching, it may have been some early
+childhood experience, such as getting caught
+under a gate, or suffering a severe jolting up by
+being let fall when a boy jumped off the other
+end of a teeter-totter, or it may simply be a
+whim. We do not know. One thing is sure,
+they are never the Quiet Type. They talk your
+arm off.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">
+    CHAPTER IV
+<br>
+<br><span class="smcap">The Sexual Revolution: Being a Rather Complete
+Survey of the Entire Sexual Scene</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> sexual revolution began with Man’s
+discovery that he was not attractive to
+Woman, as such. The lion had his mane, the
+peacock his gorgeous plumage, but Man found
+himself in a three-button sack suit. His masculine
+appearance not only failed to excite
+Woman, but in many cases it only served to
+bore her. The result was that Man found it
+necessary to develop attractive personal traits to
+offset his dull appearance. He learned to say
+funny things. He learned to smoke, and blow
+smoke rings. He learned to earn money. This
+would have been a solution to his difficulty, but
+in the course of making himself attractive to
+Woman by developing himself mentally, he inadvertently
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>became so intelligent an animal that
+he saw how comical the whole situation was.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, at the very start of the sexual revolution,
+Man faced one very definite problem: in
+becoming mentally “aware,” he had become
+intellectually critical, and had discovered that
+it was increasingly difficult to make up his mind
+whether he really desired any one woman, however
+capable he was of getting her. It was the
+heyday of monogamy, and in order to contemplate
+marriage, it was necessary for a man to decide
+on One Particular Woman. This he found
+next to impossible, for the reason that he had
+unconsciously set up so many mental barriers
+and hazards.</p>
+
+<p>Let me mention a few.</p>
+
+<p>(1) The fear that his fiancée might get fat
+inside of a few years. To any mentally alert
+man, this thought was a strong deterrent. Quite
+often the man met the girl’s parents. He would
+quickly size up her mother and make a mental
+calculation as to how long it would be before
+the daughter was in the same boat. Somehow,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>it took the bloom off the romance. If he was
+not fortunate enough to meet the parents of
+the young lady, he was quite apt to note things
+about her own conformation that seemed prophetic.
+A slight thickness in the neck, a trace
+of rotundity in the bosom, a touch too much
+ankle. In these portents he found much discomfort,
+and was quite likely to call the engagement
+off.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c075" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c075.jpg" alt="Sketch of man frowning over his shoulder at a crouching lion.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="noindent">“<i>The lion had his mane ...
+    but man found himself in a
+    three-button sack suit.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>(2) The use of a word, phrase, or punctuation
+mark by his fiancée that annoyed him. In
+these early days of the sex awakening, it was
+not at all uncommon to find examples of the
+girl’s using some slight phrase which had a grating
+effect. It was often the case that the man
+was literarily inclined—because literary inclinations
+were early found to be advantageous in
+sex, almost as advantageous, in fact, as the peacock’s
+tail—and if this was the case the man was
+doubly sensitive to the curious little crudities,
+niceties, whimsies, and circumlocutions which
+women were afflicted with. I am thinking at the
+moment of the case of a young man who, in his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>junior year in college, had found the girl he
+believed ideal for him to marry, and then one
+day learned, quite by accident, that she was in
+the habit of using the word “Howdy” as a
+form of salutation. He did not like “Howdy,”
+although he did not know why. Days and
+nights he spent trying to reconcile himself to the
+idea of it, weighing the young lady’s extreme
+beauty and affability against her one flaw. In
+the end he decided he could not stomach it, and
+broke the troth.</p>
+
+<p>(3) Difference in height. If a man fell in
+love with a woman taller than himself (which
+sometimes happened), he became morose from
+dwelling on the objections to such an alliance.
+This particular situation usually had a way of
+settling itself automatically: there were so many
+reasons, real or imaginary, why the man felt that
+the marriage was impossible, that just the mere
+business of thinking about them broke him in
+health and he died, leaving a margin of several
+weeks before the date of the wedding.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c079" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c079.jpg" alt="Sketch of woman seated in chair, man stands looking at her in consideration.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="noindent">“<i>He would quickly size up the
+    mother and make a mental calculation
+    as to how long it
+    would be before the daughter
+    was in the same boat.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>(4) The suspicion that if he waited twenty-four
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>hours, or possibly less, he would likely find
+a lady even more ideally suited to his taste than
+his fiancée. Every man entertained such a suspicion.
+Entertained it royally. He was greatly
+strengthened in his belief by the fact that he
+kept catching a fleeting glimpse of this imaginary
+person—in restaurants, in stores, in trains.
+To deny the possibility of her existence would
+be, he felt, to do a grave injustice to her, to himself,
+and to his fiancée. Man’s unflinching desire
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>to give himself and everybody else a square
+deal was the cause of much of his disturbance.
+Man had become, you see, a thinking being. He
+had come to know enough about permutations
+and combinations to realize that with millions of
+Caucasian females to choose from, the chances
+of his choosing the ideal mate were almost zero.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c081" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c081.jpg" alt="Sketch of man's head in profile, with glasses and slicked back hair.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>Male Type (eastern seaboard). Definitely interested in, but
+    uncertain what to do about, the Female. To men of this type
+    many aspects of the Sexual Revolution never became clear
+    at all.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>So matters went. Man, we have seen, had
+begun to develop himself so that he would be
+attractive to Woman, and in doing so had
+made Woman of doubtful attraction to <i>him</i>. He
+had become independent. He had become
+critical. He had become scared. Sex was awakening
+and it was all Man could do to keep from
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p>Woman, on her part, saw dimly what was
+going on in the world. She saw it through the
+sweet haze of Dream. She caught glimpses of
+it in the mirror of her Narcissistic soul.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_8_8" href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>
+Woman was at the crossroads. She had many
+ways open to her, but she chose one: <i>she chose
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>to imitate Man</i>. At a time when sex was in
+transition, she had the bad judgment to begin
+a career of independence for herself, in direct
+imitation of her well-meaning mate. She took
+up smoking. She began to earn money (not
+much, but some). She drank. She subordinated
+domesticity to individuality—of which she had
+very little. She attained to a certain independence,
+a cringing independence, a wistful, half-regretful
+state. Men and women both became
+slightly regretful: men regretted that they had
+no purple tail to begin with, women that they
+had ever been fools enough to go to work.
+Women now “understood life,” but life had
+been so much more agreeable in its original
+mystery.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_8_8" href="#FNanchor_8_8" class="label">[8]</a> This is the first mention in this article of Narcissism. You’ll
+hear more about it, don’t worry.</p></div></div>
+
+<p>And now we come to Sex.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_9_9" href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> Woman, observing
+that her mate went out of his way to make
+himself entertaining, rightly surmised that sex
+had something to do with it. From that she
+logically concluded that sex was recreational
+rather than procreational. (The small, hardy
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>band of girls who failed to get this point were
+responsible for the popularity of women’s
+field hockey in this country, 1911–1921.) As
+though in a vision, the “right to be sexual”
+came to women. They fell to with a will. For
+thousands of years they had been content merely
+to be amiable, and now they were going to be
+sexual. The transition from amiability to sexuality
+was revolutionary.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_10_10" href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> It presented a terrific
+problem to Woman, because in acquiring and
+assuming the habits that tended to give her an
+equality with Man, she discovered that she
+necessarily became a good deal <i>like</i> Man. The
+more she got like him, the less he saw in her.
+(Or so he liked to think, anyway.) Just as
+soon as she began to put her own sex on an even
+basis, she found that he lost interest. Her essential
+Narcissism (pleasure of looking in a mirror)
+was met by his Begonia-ism (concept of the
+potted plant). Things got so that Woman
+spent <i>all</i> her time admiring herself in mirrors,
+and Man, discouraged, devoted himself quietly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>to raising begonias, which are fairly easy to
+raise. Sex atrophied.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_9_9" href="#FNanchor_9_9" class="label">[9]</a> Are you glad?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_10_10" href="#FNanchor_10_10" class="label">[10]</a> Zaner claims it was also amusing.</p></div>
+</div>
+<figure class="figcenter illowp70" id="i_c085" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c085.jpg" alt="Simple sktech of man's head, eyes closed.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p>“<i>Sex atrophied.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>But, as I say, sex was in the transition stage.
+Woman soon began to outgrow her Narcissism
+and was satisfied to snatch quick glances of herself
+in make-shift mirrors, such as the backs of
+watches, the shiny fenders of automobiles, plateglass
+windows, subway weighing machines, and
+such. Convinced that sex was not sin, she set
+out joyously to study it. How hard she studied
+has recently been apparent, even to persons who
+read only a few books a year.</p>
+
+<p>New York became the capital of the sexual
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span>revolution. It was conveniently located, had
+a magnificent harbor,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_11_11" href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> a high mortality rate, and
+some of the queerest-shaped apartments to be
+found anywhere. There are apartments in New
+York in which one must step across an open
+bathtub in going from the kitchen to the bedroom;
+any unusual layout like that arouses sexual
+desire and brings people pouring into New
+York from other cities. New York became the
+Mecca for young ladies from the South and
+from the Middle West whose minds were not
+quite made up about sexual freedom, but who
+thought that if they could once get to New York
+and into an irregular apartment, the answer
+might come to them.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_11_11" href="#FNanchor_11_11" class="label">[11]</a> New York has one of the finest harbors in the world.</p></div>
+</div>
+<p>Their mothers were against it.</p>
+
+<p>“Now what can you get in New York that
+you can’t get right here at home?” their mothers
+said.</p>
+
+<p>“Concerts, new plays, and the opera,” the
+daughters invariably replied. There has never,
+to my knowledge, been a case of a young lady
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>telling her mother that she wanted to go to
+New York because she was seeking an outlet
+for her erotic eagerness. It was always concerts
+that she wanted. Often it turned out to be
+concerts that she got.</p>
+
+<p>When she arrived in New York and secured
+her unfurnished apartment (usually in West
+Fourth Street), her mental elation was so great
+and her activity in making parchment lamp
+shades so unabating that for the first couple
+of weeks she let sex go. Women are notoriously
+apt to get off the track; no man ever was diverted
+from the gratification of his desires by
+a parchment lamp shade. At any rate, the young
+lady was so tired at night she could hardly
+keep her eyes open, much less her mind.
+Furthermore, she was beginning to have <i lang="de">Schmalhausen</i>
+trouble. <i lang="de">Schmalhausen</i> trouble is a common
+ailment among girls in their twenties. It
+usually attacks girls who have taken a small
+apartment (<i lang="de">schmalhausen</i>) and are reading the
+behaviorism essays of Samuel D. Schmalhausen.
+The effect of sitting within narrow walls and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span>absorbing a wide viewpoint breaks down their
+health. The pain that they suffer during this
+period is caused by their discovery of the lyrical
+duality, or two-sidedness, of life—a discovery
+that unbalances all sensitive young ladies in
+whom sex cries for expression. Even in a New
+York apartment there are two sides to everything,
+and this particularly applies to a girl’s
+potential sexuality.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_12_12" href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_12_12" href="#FNanchor_12_12" class="label">[12]</a> Girls with a bad case of Schmalhausen sometimes saw as many
+as three sides to sex.</p></div>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c088" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c088.jpg" alt="Sketch of man walking towards bed, where woman is lying.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p>“<i>Furthermore, she was beginning to have
+    <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note&mdash;original text: Schmaulhausen" id="Schmaulhausen">Schmalhausen</ins> trouble.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Let me explain this duality.</p>
+
+<p>The very fact that the young lady had settled
+in the vicinity of Sheridan Square indicates
+that there was a strong vein of poetry in her.
+She saw life (and sex) through a lyrical haze
+which tended to accentuate its beauty by softening
+its truths. The whole purpose and scheme
+of poetry is to heighten the tenderness and essential
+goodness of life by a musical elaboration
+of its traditional worth.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_13_13" href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> Well, when the
+young lady allowed the lyrical possibilities of
+love to work on her mind, it made her mad to
+remember how candid she had been the night
+before in discussing contraception with the commercial
+artist who lived downstairs. It grew to
+be a big question in her own mind, just what her
+emancipation ought to consist of: whether it
+meant having lemon skins and gin stoppers in
+the wash-basin and talking freely of exhibitionism
+and voyeurism, or whether it meant being
+the recipient of some overwhelmingly beautiful
+passion which her poetical soul still prescribed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>but which she knew couldn’t exist because
+she was so widely read. To stall for time
+she would make another lamp shade.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_13_13" href="#FNanchor_13_13" class="label">[13]</a> See Tithridge’s “Poetry,” but don’t read it.</p></div>
+</div>
+<p>Days slipped by. Always there was conflict
+in her soul. She had plunged into the “candor
+régime” whole-heartedly; she could enter
+a roomful of people and say almost anything at
+all. She also went in for nudity—another outlet
+for sex eagerness. She dallied in the bath,
+lay around the apartment without any clothes
+on, appeared scantily clad at her door when the
+laundryman called to collect, and week-ends
+went swimming naked in the moonlight with
+other young people. (Incidentally, when she
+saw what a man looked like without any
+clothes on, the old <i lang="de">Schmalhausen</i> trouble came
+back stronger than ever.)</p>
+
+<p>By and by, because of this very uncertainty
+of soul, a kind of orderliness of habit crept into
+her life. Unable to decide whether sex was the
+poem she half believed it to be or the casual
+episode she had schooled herself to think it was,
+she compromised by practically giving sex the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>air. She now held a good job and was earning
+well. Candor and nudity, with an occasional
+bit of exhibitionism, began to satisfy her completely.
+She was growing older. The apartment
+was nicely decorated now and teeming
+with lamp shades. She held some good industrial
+stocks and had developed an ambition to
+write. She became content to be literary rather
+than sexual. She became, in other words, that
+most dangerous of all by-products of the Sexual
+Revolution—a biologico-cultural type. She had
+a way of leading young men on into exhilarating
+topics, and sitting with them in provocative attitudes,
+and then putting on her hat and going
+quietly home to bed. In short, New York was
+now home to this girl, this biologico-cultural
+lady, and she was in a fair way to step placidly
+into a good old-fashioned marriage when the
+right man came along.</p>
+
+<p>And he usually did, the poor yap.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">
+    CHAPTER V
+<br>
+<br>
+<span class="smcap">The Lilies-and-Bluebird Delusion</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> young bridegroom who unexpectedly
+discovers that his wife has been brought
+up in extreme unawareness of the true facts of
+life and believes in some variant of the Birds
+and Flowers Delusion (that is, that birds and
+flowers have something to do with the emotional
+life of persons), is faced with a situation
+calling for the greatest tact and tenderness. It
+won’t do any good for him to get mad, or to
+indulge in self-pity, crying, “Oh, how sorry I
+am for me!” and only a coward would go directly
+into a psycho-neurosis without first trying
+to win his wife over to acceptance of things as
+they are.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c093" >
+  <img class="illowp80" src="images/i_c093.jpg" alt="Sketch of man in suit with cane standing next to a large potted plant. Plant branches hang over his shoulders.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p class="center"><i>DR. WALTER TITHRIDGE</i></p>
+      <p class="noindent">(<i>after the etching by Veerbluergen</i>).</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>I have in mind the case of a young lady
+whose silly mother had taught her to believe
+that she would have a little son, three years old,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>named Ronald, as soon as her husband brought
+a pair of bluebirds into a room filled with lilies-of-the-valley.
+The young woman (to say nothing
+of the young man) was thus made the victim
+of one of the extremest cases of Birds and
+Flowers Fixation which has ever come to my
+attention. I shall transcribe, from Dr. Tithridge’s
+notes, the first dialogue on the subject
+that took place between the young couple. This
+dialogue was carefully reconstructed by Tithridge
+from the account of the incident as given
+by the young husband, who sought his advice
+and counsel.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of the 25th of June, when
+the couple were married, the young husband
+entered their hotel suite to find it literally a
+garden of lilies-of-the-valley. He was profoundly
+touched, but baffled, and asked his wife
+who was dead.</p>
+
+<p>“Where are the bluebirds?” she replied,
+coyly.</p>
+
+<p>“What bluebirds?” he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>The</i> bluebirds,” she said, blushing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span></p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, but not unnaturally, the bridegroom
+did not know what the bride was talking
+about. What was of the extremest importance to
+her, was to her husband merely an idle whim,
+a shadowy fancy. Obviously, the young couple
+should have talked such matters over long before,
+but they hadn’t, and there they were. He
+strove to change the subject, whistled, lighted
+cigarettes, for he was nervous enough the way
+it was, but she kept recurring to the bluebirds.
+His bewilderment became tinged with some
+alarm, for during their courtship he had put
+forth no great effort to examine into her mental
+capacity, and he was now assailed by the excusable
+suspicion that she was perhaps not exactly
+bright. He talked rapidly, apprehensively,
+of many things. Among the things he talked
+about were the St. Louis Cardinals (a baseball
+club). From there it was but an easy associative
+step for his wife to go back to the bluebirds
+again.</p>
+
+<p>“Aren’t you going to <i>get</i> any bluebirds?” she
+persisted.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know where the hell I’d get any
+bluebirds tonight,” he said, rather irritably, “me
+not being Bo-Peep.”</p>
+
+<p>The nuclear complex was made right then
+and there. There was a long tense silence, after
+which the bride burst into bitter tears.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, dear,” said her husband, more reasonably,
+“let’s try to get this thing straightened
+out. What are you talking about, anyway?”</p>
+
+<p>“Sex—if you want to know!” she blurted out,
+and swooned.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of getting her a glass of water, he
+excitedly phoned the room clerk, but became
+embarrassed once he had got him, and merely
+asked that a couple of blankets be sent up. It
+was, unfortunately, as I have said, June—and
+warmish. Thus when the wife revived sufficiently
+to become aware of her surroundings,
+the husband was standing above her holding a
+pair of blankets, and looking pale and warm.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c098" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c098.jpg" alt="Sketch of man leaned forward seated in a chair. His face is turned down, and his arm is around the waist of a woman kneeling infront of him. She has her head tilted back, and her hand over her eyes.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>“Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during
+    the first year of any marriage.”</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>“What are those for?” she demanded, suspiciously,
+for the notion had now formed in her
+own mind (Dr. Tithridge feels, and I agree)
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>that she very likely had married a dementia
+præcox case. These mutual suspicions of mental
+inadequacy are common during the first year
+of any marriage, but rarely are they aggravated
+by factors so clearly calculated to upset the mental
+equilibrium as bluebirds at midnight and
+blankets in June. This husband and wife were
+drifting farther and farther apart. The solution
+to their problem was becoming more and
+more remote, what with this setting up of involved
+artificial barriers, this almost fantastical
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span>beclouding of the issue. Dr. Tithridge tells me
+that he believes the young man’s reason would
+have been permanently dethroned had he (Dr.
+Tithridge) tweeted or chirped like a bird&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_14_14" href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> on
+the occasion of the husband’s first visit to him.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_14_14" href="#FNanchor_14_14" class="label">[14]</a> Experiments of this sort, calculated to determine the possible
+effects of tweeting, or chirping, in the case of a Birds Fixation,
+fall, of course, outside the province of the psycho-analyst, and not
+only is the legality of their practice questionable, but the value of
+the results obtained is highly doubtful.</p></div>
+</div>
+<p>When the wife beheld her husband standing
+there with the blankets, she demanded, again,
+“What are you doing with those blankets?”</p>
+
+<p>“I get cold,” he mumbled, and he proceeded
+to put the blankets on the shelf of a closet
+which already held several extra pair. He was,
+furthermore, decidedly warm, and kept patting
+his brow with a handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>“Let’s go out and take a walk,” suggested his
+wife, apprehensively. To this her husband very
+readily agreed. They were getting afraid to
+stay in the same room with each other, than
+which there is no other condition in the world
+more certain to break up a marriage. Out in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>the street, among people, they both felt safer,
+and they wandered to a bench in a fairly
+crowded park, and sat down.</p>
+
+<p>“Where did you get the idea that birds have
+anything to do with us?” demanded the bridegroom.</p>
+
+<p>“My mumsy,”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_15_15" href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> she said.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_15_15" href="#FNanchor_15_15" class="label">[15]</a> Young women who allude to their mothers as “mumsy” almost
+invariably present difficult problems in adjustment. The word is
+a sentimentalization of the more common “mamma” and indicates
+a greater dependence upon maternal direction and supervision than
+may be expected in the case of young women who use the more
+familiar term.</p></div>
+</div>
+<p>“Well,” he said, “she deceived you.”</p>
+
+<p>“About what?”</p>
+
+<p>“About what you’re talking about.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sex?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“That isn’t sex, honey,” he told her. “Birds
+and flowers are simply ... they do not ...
+that is, we could live all our life without them.”</p>
+
+<p>“I couldn’t,” she said, and, after a pause, “I
+always feared <i>you</i> didn’t want children.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do want children. I want you. You want
+me. Everything is going to be all right.”</p>
+
+<p>“How is it?” she demanded.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span></p>
+
+<p>“In the first place,” he began, pulling at his
+collar, “it’s this way. Now here’s the way it
+is. Now you take me ... or take you, say.
+In the first place the girl, that is Woman ...
+why, Woman&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_16_16" href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> ...” He lapsed into a profound
+silence.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_16_16" href="#FNanchor_16_16" class="label">[16]</a> Explanations of natural phenomena in terms of the collective
+noun, particularly where the noun becomes capitalized in the
+mind of the person striving to explain, are almost never successful.</p></div>
+</div>
+<p>“Well, go on,” she prompted.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” he said, “you know how women are,
+don’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” she said, doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s fine,” he said, brightening, “Now
+women are that way, then——”</p>
+
+<p>“What way?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, the way you are ... from me ...
+than I am, I mean.” He made a vague gesture.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t see what you mean,” she said. Her
+husband gave a light laugh.</p>
+
+<p>“Hell’s bells, it’s simple enough,” he cried,
+suddenly, giving the light laugh again; “it’s certainly
+simple enough. Now, here. We’ll take
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>Adam and Eve. There they were, all alone,
+see?”</p>
+
+<p>“There were two bluebirds,” said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“Not till after the flood, there weren’t,” he
+corrected her. “Well, he found out that there
+were certain essential differences—what you
+might call on purpose. I mean there must have
+been some reason. You can count on it that
+things like that just don’t happen. Well, then,
+he simply figured it out—figured out the
+reason.”</p>
+
+<p>“For what?”</p>
+
+<p>“For all this discrepancy. Obviously it just
+didn’t happen. It couldn’t just have happened.
+It had to make some sense—nature is like that.
+So he—so he finally—ah—what he did was tell
+her, see? I mean he asked her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Asked her what?”</p>
+
+<p>“He simply asked her,” said her husband in
+calm, almost cold tones,—“he simply asked her
+why she thought this was. Is there anything
+wrong in that? And so gradually they understood
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>why it was. It’s as simple as that!” He
+looked at her triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>“What <i>are</i> you talking about?” she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>“Listen,” he said at last, firmly. “Both of
+us speak a little French, and we might try it
+that way. I think I could explain better in
+French. Why, even little children, tiny girls,
+sing <i lang="fr">Auprès de ma blonde</i> in France, and think
+nothing of it. It’s just a nice, wholesome idea—<i lang="fr">auprès
+de ma blonde</i>—and it sounds like
+poetry—but take it in English and what do you
+get?”</p>
+
+<p>“‘Quite close to my blonde’ ...” answered
+his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“... ‘<i lang="fr">Qu’il fait bon dormir</i>,’” her husband
+hurried on.</p>
+
+<p>“‘How good it is to sleep,’” she translated.</p>
+
+<p>“Fine! Now you’re talking.”</p>
+
+<p>“Go on,” she said, “<i>you’re</i> talking.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, all right, but first I wanted you to see
+that there is no reason to get embarrassed, because
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>everything is lovely in French. So don’t
+mind my frankness.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t,” said the bride.</p>
+
+<p>“All right,” he began again, “<i lang="fr">Alors</i>, now, <i lang="fr">il y
+a quelque chose que vous avez que je n’en ai
+pas, n’est-ce pas?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“<i lang="fr">Oui</i>,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“<i lang="fr">Bon</i>,” he said. “<i lang="fr">Alors, ça c’est naturel—ah—ça
+c’est bien naturel....</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“<i lang="fr">Par exemple</i>,” put in his wife, a little illogically.</p>
+
+<p>“<i lang="fr">Dites</i>,” he said, and after a great pause,
+“<i lang="fr">Dites donc—dites vous</i>——”</p>
+
+<p>“You should really use ‘tu’ and ‘toi’ and not
+‘vous,’” said his wife; “it’s more intimate.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right,” he responded. “Now, <i lang="fr">tu as quelque
+chose, tu as ... toi</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Comment?</i>” she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>“I just don’t know enough words,” said the
+bridegroom, wretchedly. The bride put her
+hand on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>“Let’s try ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ in English,” she
+suggested.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c105" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c105.jpg" alt="Sketch of man holding his head in one hand, looking forward.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="center"><i>DR. KARL ZANER.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span></p>
+
+<p>“That’s not a bad idea,” he said. “Well, all
+right. Now thee has——”</p>
+
+<p>“Hath,” she corrected.</p>
+
+<p>“Thee hath certain—ah——”</p>
+
+<p>“Differences,” she supplied. “But isn’t it
+‘thou hath’—or is it ‘thee hath’?”</p>
+
+<p>“To hell with it!” cried her husband. “In all
+thy life hast never been around, for Pete’s
+sake?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly, and thou—and you have no right
+to talk to me like that!”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m <i>sorry</i>,” said the young man. “<i>I’m</i> sorry.”
+He rose to his feet. “Ye gods! to think this had
+to happen to me! Ah, well. Listen. I tell
+you what, I’ll write it out for you. How about
+that? And if you don’t like the idea, why, all
+right, I suppose.”</p>
+
+<p>It was the next day that the young husband,
+who had sat up all night in the hotel lobby,
+thinking and writing, visited Dr. Tithridge. I
+am happy to report that, as not infrequently
+happens in such cases, a solution was finally
+arrived at. However, in a great number of cases
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span>the difficulty is never overcome. The home becomes
+a curious sort of hybrid, with overtones
+of the botanical garden and the aviary. The
+husband grows morose and snappish, the wife
+cross and pettish. Very often she takes up
+lacrosse and he goes in for raising rabbits. If
+allowed to go on, the situation can become so
+involved and intricate that not all the analysts
+from the time of Joan of Arc down could unravel
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The problem is by no means any simpler
+where the wife is cognizant of things as they
+are and the husband is ignorant. I know of
+one young man who every night tenderly placed,
+with much strange clucking, a basket near the
+hearth into which he had some expectation that
+a baby would be deposited by a stork. (<a href="#i_c109">Plate&nbsp;I.</a>)
+Another young husband constructed at considerable
+expense a water-lily pond in his back yard
+and fondly rowed about in it, twilight after
+twilight, searching for infants, laying his finger
+to his lip, making “tchk, tchk” noises at his wife,
+who watched him in profound amazement.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c109" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c109.jpg" alt="Sketch of man on all fours infront of a fire, facing a woman seated on the floor.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="center"><i>EMOTIONAL CHARADES.
+    PLATE&nbsp;I.</i></p>
+      <p class="noindent">“<i>One young man every night
+    tenderly placed, with much
+    strange clucking, a basket
+    near the hearth into which
+    he had some expectation that
+    a baby would be deposited by
+    a stork.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span></p>
+
+<p>In both these cases the wives were fine women
+of strong character, with a background of sturdy
+pioneer stock, and they soon put a stop to such
+charades, once they divined the curiously entangled
+Wish Motives behind them. It may be
+said, indeed, that young wives are more candid
+and direct in their explanations of natural
+phenomena than young husbands, when they
+have to be.</p>
+
+<p>The existence of such deplorable ignorance
+is a sad commentary on the sentimentality of a
+nation which sets itself up to be frankly sexual.
+There is much reason to be hopeful, however.
+The future parents of the land will doubtless
+come straight to the point in matters of this
+sort, when talking with their children. The
+children of today will be the parents of tomorrow,
+and you know how the children of today
+are.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">
+    CHAPTER VI
+<br>
+<br>
+<span class="smcap">What Should Children Tell Parents?</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">So many</span> children have come to me and
+said, “What shall I tell my parents about
+sex?” My answer is always the same: “Tell
+them the truth. If the subject is approached in
+a tactful way, it should be no more embarrassing
+to teach a parent about sex than to teach
+him about personal pronouns. And it should
+be less discouraging.”</p>
+
+<p>In discussing sex enlightenment for parents,
+first of all, definitions are needed. What do
+we mean by “parents”? Do we mean all adults
+who have had children? Do we mean adults
+who have had children, they knew not why?
+Or do we mean married people who have given
+birth to one or more offspring but have never
+gone into the matter very thoroughly? For the
+purposes of this article, it will be assumed that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>by “parents” we mean all adult persons permeated
+with a strong sense of indecency.</p>
+
+<p>I have talked with hundreds of children about
+the problem of educating their parents along
+sex lines. So many of them have told me that
+they honestly tried to give their elders the benefit
+of their rich experience in life, but that the
+parents usually grew flushed and red and would
+reply, “Nice people don’t talk about such
+things.” It is true that a great gap exists between
+generations. The fact that children are
+embarrassed to have their parents along when
+they are attending certain movies or plays is indicative
+of how hard it is to overcome the old
+fear of allowing one’s elders to learn anything.
+A child never knows at what point in a play
+his uninformed old father will start to giggle.
+It is hard for children to break through and
+really come in touch with their elders. “Nice
+people don’t talk about such things!” is the defense
+which old people put up against life itself,
+when they feel it crowding in all around
+their heads. Parents hesitate to discuss things
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>calmly and intelligently with their children for
+two reasons: first, they have a kind of dread of
+learning something they don’t want to know;
+and second, they feel that if they must learn anything
+at all they would like to be spared the
+humiliation of learning it from their offspring.
+Actually, middle age (and even senescence) is
+marked by a great curiosity about life. There is
+a feeling that life is slipping away quickly, and
+that it would be terrible to have the end come
+before everything in life has been revealed. The
+beauty of life, always apparent, implies a mystery
+which is disturbing right up to the bitter
+end. The spectacle of old men wistfully attending
+sex lectures (as they frequently do) suggests
+that the strong suspicion exists in them that
+somewhere they will hear the magic word by
+which human affairs will become clarified, somewhere
+they will glimpse the ultimate ecstasy.
+Children who allow their fathers and mothers,
+to whom they owe their very existence, to go on
+wondering about sex, are derelicts to duty.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c115" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c115.jpg" alt="Sketch of man seated in a chair, a small boy stands on a chair in front of him talking.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p>“<i>One’s father and mother are never too old to be told
+    facts.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>If young folks lack the tact or intelligence
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>requisite to enlightening their parents, the task
+should be intrusted to some one else. Yet it
+is hard to say to whom. A child should think
+twice before sending his father around to public
+school to secure sex information from his
+teacher. Women teachers, to borrow a phrase,
+are apt to be “emotionally illiterate.” Many
+teachers have had no sex life and are just waiting
+for somebody like your father to show up.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span></p>
+
+<p>One’s father and mother are never too old
+to be told facts. Indeed, it is most unkind to
+keep them in ignorance and allow them to
+nourish the doubts and horrors of their imagination.
+The majority of parents pick up their
+knowledge of the facts of life from smoking-car
+conversations, bridge-club teas, and after-dinner
+speakers. They receive it from their vicious
+adult companions who are only slightly less
+ignorant than they are and who give them a
+hopelessly garbled version. They pick it up,
+too, from the gutter.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c117" >
+  <img class="illowp100" src="images/i_c117.jpg" alt="Sketch of a weather map.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="noindent"><i>Fig. 7. It is customary to illustrate sexology chapters with
+    a cross section of the human body. The authors have
+    chosen to substitute in its place a chart of the North
+    Atlantic, showing airplane routes. The authors realize that
+    this will be of no help to the sex novice, but neither is a
+    cross section of the human body.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>This matter of picking up information from
+the gutter is an interesting topic in itself. Quite
+the most remarkable case history that has come
+to my notice is that of François Delamater, a
+parent thirty years of age, who went deliberately
+to the gutter for his sex education. He had
+heard, as all people do hear some time or other,
+that sex can be learned from the gutter, so he
+set out to make a comprehensive survey of the
+gutters of eighteen large American cities. For
+a long time he found out nothing, although he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>was a very curious man. By a peculiar piece of
+fortune, however, he happened to be walking
+in Cincinnati one day and met a man who was
+leading a tame stork. The man was in the
+gutter. The stork carried in its bill a live baby,
+in swaddling clothes. Smelling a rat, Mr. Delamater
+stopped the man and inquired where the
+baby came from. The man replied that he
+didn’t know.</p>
+
+<p>“For that matter,” continued Mr. Delamater,
+“where does <i>any</i> baby come from?”</p>
+
+<p>The man shook his head. Then he relented
+and told Mr. Delamater that he had merely
+been hired to lead the stork around the streets
+to advertise a moving picture called “Her Husband’s
+First-born.” The whole incident so confused
+the mind of the thirty-year-old parent that
+he eventually evolved the strange theory that
+babies are born within the father, an erroneous
+notion that dwarfed his emotions and modified
+his character.</p>
+
+<p>It is of the utmost importance, in imparting
+sex knowledge to one’s parents that it be done
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>in such a way as not to engender fear or anxiety.
+The phraseology should be chosen carefully, and
+efforts should be made to explain everything
+clearly but without the use of words which have
+a tendency to make old people nervous. The
+word “erotic” is such a word. When it is necessary
+to speak of Man’s erotic tendencies, it is
+best to substitute another word. In the first
+place, an overwhelming majority of parents do
+not know the exact meaning of the word
+“erotic,” and to know an <i>in</i>exact meaning is
+worse than nothing. Many are apt to confuse
+it vaguely with “exotic.” I have known parents
+to go through whole books by authors like Havelock
+Ellis or Mary Ware Dennett without understanding
+a single paragraph, because they
+thought Man’s “eroticism” referred to his desire
+to be in some foreign place like Spain. Those
+parents that actually do detect the difference between
+the sound of the two words will immediately
+become nervous, inattentive, and
+dispirited. They will make some excuse to leave
+the room, and will wander out, probably to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span>the ice-box to get themselves a cold snack, which
+they will eat while in a sulky frame of mind.
+Later they will look up the word in the dictionary,
+but will forget it by the time they hear it
+again in conversation or read it in print. Furthermore,
+all their taste for sex will be gone.</p>
+
+<p>Just what to tell parents is, of course, a vital
+question, not to be answered dogmatically. Before
+a child can conscientiously approach such
+subjects as pedestalism, the recessive knee, begonia-ism,
+frigidity in men, birth control,
+sublimation, and the swastika fixation, he must
+clear the boards. The simple phases of sex
+should be imparted in a direct manner: it is
+best to explain things in a matter-of-fact way,
+rather than resort to such cloudy analogies as
+birds and flowers. Strange to say, the habits of
+birds and flowers have done as little to clarify
+the human scene as almost any other two manifestations
+in nature. Further, there is always the
+danger, in setting up plant or animal life as an
+example, that one’s parents will place a literal
+interpretation on things. I am thinking particularly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>of the case—which all sociological students
+know about—of Nina Sembrich, the fifteen-year-old
+high-school girl who attempted to
+impart knowledge to her father by telling him
+about bees. (Nina’s mother was dead, or she
+would have told her too.) She traced, in rather
+minute detail, the renascence of earth in spring,
+the blossoming of the trees, the activity of the
+bees and their function in distributing the pollen,
+the fertilization of the seed and its growth
+during the warm languorous summer days,
+finally the fruition and harvest.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c123" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c123.jpg" alt="Sketch of three figures in various postures in a garden.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="noindent">“<i>Strange to say, the habits of
+    birds and flowers have done
+    as little to clarify the human
+    scene as almost any other two
+    manifestations in nature.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>It was a beautiful story, redolent of orchards
+and sunny hillsides, instinct with life—a story
+that had a soporific effect on Mr. Sembrich, lulling
+him as the buzz of a bee lulls one in hot
+daisy fields. The upshot of it was that he
+gathered a rather strange impression from the
+narrative and somehow got the idea that to have
+babies you had to keep bees. He bought several
+hives, installing them in the little sitting-room
+on the second floor, where Mrs. Sembrich
+had kept her sewing-machine when she was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span>alive. The acquisition of the apiary further
+complicated matters for Mr. Sembrich by reason
+of the fact that bees themselves enjoy a
+rather extraordinary sexual scheme—theirs is a
+complex society, infinitely more diverting and
+harder to understand than our own. Observed
+by a slightly nervous person who is trying to
+profit by a simple analogy—as Mr. Sembrich
+was—bees are capable of causing the utmost
+confusion.</p>
+
+<p>If you will recall what you know about bees,
+you will readily understand what I mean. In
+a colony of bees, certain individuals have no
+sex whatsoever; these are the “workers.” The
+male bees are “drones.” The queen (or “mother”)
+bee develops her sexual character only after
+being arbitrarily chosen for the purpose, walled
+up, and fattened on special food. Mr. Sembrich
+marveled at these things.</p>
+
+<p>Basing his hopes entirely on what he had
+seen, he made his first overt act, which was to
+give up his business (he was a merchant tailor)
+on the assumption that to be endowed with masculine
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span>characteristics one had to be a drone. In
+this, of course, he was justified to some degree;
+for it is quite true that very busy men rarely
+are fully equipped for a complete or happy sex
+life. Business men commonly find a vicarious
+gratification for their erotic nature in card index
+systems. Often, their satiable appetite for life is
+dissipated in the process of dictating a single
+sales letter. Only men who devote virtually
+their entire attention to love ever glimpse its
+full glory or experience its bewildering intensity.
+(And <i>they</i> make so little money they might
+just as well not.)</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sembrich, therefore, was not without justification
+in becoming a drone, since life was
+what he wanted to find out about. But it was
+when he undertook to fatten up a lady of his
+acquaintance into a “mother” that he ran into
+difficulties. He locked her in the kitchen and
+plied her with rich desserts. He even urged
+honey on her—a rather literal expedient even
+for a man in his mental condition. The lady
+not only failed to become a mother, but she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span>took sick and died, surrounded by a group of
+Mr. Sembrich’s “workers,” whom he had hired
+to help feed her. With a dead woman in the
+kitchen and a lot of bees upstairs in the sitting-room,
+the household became unbearable as a
+place to live and bring up his daughter Nina,
+so Mr. Sembrich fled, still ignorant of the essential
+knowledge of life.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_17_17" href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_17_17" href="#FNanchor_17_17" class="label">[17]</a> Sexually speaking.</p></div>
+</div>
+<p>Another case, not exactly paralleling the
+Sembrich affair, is the case of two parents who
+failed to learn something to their advantage because
+they happened to be at dinner. It happened
+this way. Charles Updegraff had sent his
+son, Junior, to spend the summer at a boys’
+camp. There, in addition to learning how to
+swim, paddle, and make fires, Junior learned
+about sex, so that he returned home fine and
+brown and a credit to the Updegraffs. (The
+Updegraffs had swum, paddled, made fires, and
+so on, for generations.) Now, at Camp Whortleberry
+(that was the name of the camp) the
+authorities had adopted what is known as the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>“pet method” for imparting sex knowledge to
+the boys. Each boy was given charge of a pet
+of some kind, and the pets were given <i lang="fr">carte
+blanche</i>. Junior Updegraff drew a pair of sunfish.
+To augment the actual pet study, the boys
+were also given lectures by the camp director,
+who knew in a general way what he was talking
+about. Thus, when the summer was over
+the boys’ minds were full of a strange assortment
+of facts and oddments, some of them
+rather amusing. Young Junior had hardly been
+home an hour when he thought he would do his
+old man a good turn by telling him what he
+knew about sunfish. The Updegraffs were at
+table.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp70" id="i_c128" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c128.jpg"
+alt="Rough sketch of a fish, labeled 'Sunfish (mola-mola)'">
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Pop,” he said, “do you want the low down
+on a sunfish?”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Updegraff hastily interrupted. “Better
+wait till after dinner, son,” she said.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c129" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c129.jpg"
+alt="Sketch of an adult seated in a chair, leaned over towards a young person standing in front of them.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p>“<i>Young Junior had hardly been home an hour when he
+    thought he would do his old man a good turn by telling
+    him what he knew about sunfish.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>(Note: parents have always been held back
+by the superstitious idea that it is wrong to
+learn anything while eating.)</p>
+
+<p>“What’s the matter with right now?” asked
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>Junior. “I was just going to tell Pop about our
+pet study course. I know a lot of things.”</p>
+
+<p>“Wait till we’re through eating,” said Mrs.
+Updegraff.</p>
+
+<p>“Why should I? A mouse is an embryo
+twenty days, a lop-sided apple is that way because
+it’s been fertilized only on one side, male
+animals grow bright colored in the mating
+season, and so it goes. Sunfish....”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp70" id="i_c130" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c130.jpg"
+alt="Very rough sketch of a fish, labled 'Sea Rover'">
+</figure>
+
+<p>“Junior!” said Mrs. Updegraff, sharply. “Not
+till after dinner. Sunfish can wait!”</p>
+
+<p>“No they can’t!” cried Junior, warming up to
+his subject. “The father sunfish makes the nest,
+then....”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span></p>
+
+<p>“We don’t want to hear about it,” snapped
+Junior’s mother. “Tell us about your canoe
+trips.”</p>
+
+<p>“I never went on no canoe trips.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why not?”</p>
+
+<p>“Always was watching the sunfish.”</p>
+
+<p>The matter was dropped and the meal continued
+in silence. After dinner Mr. Updegraff,
+secretly very much interested, hung around in
+the hope that his son would again open up the
+subject of sunfish. The boy never did. He was
+only a child and children are easily discouraged.</p>
+
+<p>I suspect that the church is responsible, in
+large measure, for the ideas of life now held
+by adults. Sex is still sin to the evangelical
+clergy. A kiss is thinkable only when sanctified
+by the church. A child who permits his parents
+to continue in the belief that the elevation of
+the soul depends on the renunciation of the
+flesh, is hardly doing his duty by them. Sometimes
+it may be advisable to quote to your
+parents from standard works on the subject of
+sex. Great care must be taken, though, to avoid
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>abruptness, as far as possible. Thus there is
+some doubt in my mind whether a child ought
+to approach its mother on a hot afternoon when
+she is tired and bedraggled, and say to her:
+“Ma, under favorable conditions a husband and
+wife should remain sexually attractive to each
+other during the whole period of their sexual
+potency.”</p>
+
+<p>That’s no way for a child to talk.</p>
+
+<p>Some children have told me that instead of
+quoting from books they have tried leaving the
+books lying around, opened at pertinent pages.
+Even this failed to work in most cases. The
+mothers usually just picked up the book, dusted
+it, closed it, and fitted it neatly in some nearby
+shelf. They thought it was dusty.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp70" id="i_c132" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c132.jpg" alt="Another rough sketch of a fish, labled 'Sea Rover'">
+</figure>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">
+    CHAPTER VII
+<br><br>
+<span class="smcap">Claustrophobia, or What Every Young Wife
+Should Know</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">There</span> is an erroneous impression current
+nowadays that sex is everything. It is similar
+to the psychological delusion common during
+the war years that the war would never end.
+Man is inclined to exaggerate the immensity of
+his chief preoccupation. Thus when the World
+War was in progress, men convinced themselves
+that there would never be anything else but war.
+Then the war ended, and Man was left, as it
+were, stranded. Used to a tremendous preoccupation,
+he had to have another. He turned to
+sex, out of sheer momentum, and overestimated
+its importance as he had magnified the immensity
+of war.</p>
+
+<p>Sex is by no means everything. It varies, as
+a matter of fact, from only as high as 78 per
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>cent of everything to as low as 3.10 per cent.
+The norm, in a sane, healthy person, should be
+between 18 and 24 per cent. In these hectic
+days, however, it is not unusual to hear even intelligent
+persons say, or imply, that sex is everything.
+This, of course, leads to the mistaken
+idea that a couple who are, so to speak, emotionally
+compatible, are going to be compatible
+in every other way. “Take care of sex, and the
+details will look after themselves,” is the rule,
+in a manner of speaking. Nothing could be
+more stupid. A man and woman may be very,
+very happy emotionally and not get anywhere
+at all. There are many reasons for this, but
+none is more important than the inability of
+many a husband, otherwise normal, to become
+adjusted to a lack of freedom. Freedom is as
+essential and as primary an urge with a man
+as the loss of it is with a woman. A man grows
+up with the desire to be free and unfettered.
+The boy of six wants to play outside the house
+all the time. He doesn’t even want to come
+into the house for his meals. On the other hand,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span>little girls like to be in the house as much as
+they can. When dusk falls, the little boys are
+restless under the urge to be several blocks away,
+playing Go, Sheepy, Go, but the little girls want
+to be home putting their dolls to bed. Usually
+at least one of the dolls is ill and needs constant
+attention. Often it is necessary to force little
+girls to go outside and get some air and exercise,
+just as it is frequently necessary to use
+force to get little boys <i>into</i> the house. And even
+when girls do go outdoors, they have to be
+watched like a hawk or they will be playing
+house in the dog box or under the cellar door.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, in spite of all this, women marry
+men without giving the serious chasm between
+their essential natures a thought. They think
+that a man wants a home. Well, he does, in
+a vague sort of way. Not so much a home,
+however, as a house. He likes to be able to
+say where he lives when he goes to vote, and
+things like that. But he doesn’t want a home
+in the sense that a woman does, to potter
+around in. He has neither the same urge nor
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>the same talent for hanging pictures and rearranging
+furniture. A woman, no matter how
+opposed she may become to housework, still gets
+a small thrill out of shifting things. It never
+wears off. She may be too tired to cook and
+insist on going out to dinner, but before she
+goes she would be willing, nay, glad, to put
+the Victrola where the davenport is and move
+the davenport over in front of the fireplace.
+One simple move like that is enough to alarm
+a man sufficiently to serve as the onset of a serious
+psychological or mental disturbance. Men
+don’t stop to reason about individual moves.
+As soon as a woman calls on her husband to
+help her change the position of a couple of
+pieces of furniture, he instantly thinks the house
+is going to be torn up, as it was last spring,
+with carpets rolled up in the hall, and stepladders
+and buckets everywhere. This gives
+him a strange “boxed-in” feeling. If that feeling
+recurs too often, the husband may get
+claustrophobia. Claustrophobia is “a dread of
+being in an enclosed space, of living under conditions
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span>which would interfere with a speedy
+escape into the open.”</p>
+
+<p>Every young wife should know the first
+symptoms of claustrophobia, because, if taken in
+time, it can be cured, but if allowed to run on,
+deterioration sets in and may result in anything
+from benign stupor to complete paranoia. Once
+a husband gets into the outer rim of the paranoid
+and paranoic psychoses, he may easily run
+through all of them, and in the end simply be
+no good at all. The first symptoms are usually
+innocuous enough, and may consist of nothing
+more than a mere Amplification of Personality
+Without Signs of Conflict. (The symptoms
+listed herein are largely selected from Claudé’s
+table.) But from there it is an easy step up
+to and including Logical Development of Delusions
+upon False Premises, Fragmentation of
+Personality, Dissimulation of Egocentricity,
+Looseness of Systematization, Exaggerated Feelings
+of Prejudice, Polymorphic Delusions, Ingenious
+Methods of Defense, Reticence, Recourse
+to Legal Measures, Apathy, Writing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span>Letters to the Newspapers, and, finally, Diminution,
+or Total Loss, of Neuro-Vegetative Reflexes.
+There is nothing sadder than the spectacle
+of a once strong, firm-minded man no
+longer master of his neuro-vegetative reflexes,
+to say nothing of a hitherto well-integrated fellow
+in the throes of Fragmentation.</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="AVOIDING_THIS_SAD_STATE">
+  AVOIDING THIS SAD STATE
+</h3>
+
+<p>There are various simple ways to avoid this
+sad state of affairs. Of course, where a husband
+and wife have plenty of money to begin with,
+and servants take care of all the details of household
+management, there is very little danger of
+claustrophobia. (There is always danger, even
+with money and servants, of dual personality,
+melancholia, and automatic writing, but not of
+claustrophobia.) In wealthy marriages, which
+are usually made for either financial or social
+reasons, the husband and wife see little, if anything,
+of each other, and the husband need have
+no fear of being boxed in at all. He is free to
+come and go at any time. But I am dealing with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span>the typical American marriage, in which the
+wife runs her own home—builds it up around
+her husband—either because she has to, or because
+she wants to. A woman’s desire to potter
+about her own home goes back a long way, so
+far back that the urge often remains when economic
+necessity no longer exists. Women like
+to do their own work. They even build up
+ingenious excuses for doing it, such as claiming
+that the maid or the handy man didn’t do
+it right. This desire may not last for longer
+than the first three or four weeks of marriage,
+but that is ample time for the onset of claustrophobia.
+During that period a wife will concentrate
+on buying kitchen ware, painting chairs,
+selecting silver patterns, building bookshelves,
+etc., to the complete exclusion of everything else
+in life. The young husband, hearing all this
+tinkling and rattling and shoving going on
+around him, smelling paint, listening to hammering,
+etc., will begin at once to have a fear
+of being trapped or “caught.” He will strive
+to get out of the house, and his wife should
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>allow him to go. What she almost invariably
+does, however, is to stop him and ask him to
+hold a piece of chintz or toile de jouy up over
+the mantel so that she can see whether she likes
+it there. She won’t like it there, and he then
+has to hold it, first high, then low, then in between,
+over a table in another part of the room.
+When this point is settled, he will likely be
+asked to hang a few pictures. Now a curious
+thing happens to many sensitive husbands when
+they are hanging pictures or holding things
+against walls. They get the impression that the
+walls are being made thicker, for the purpose of
+making it harder for them to get out—interfering
+with a speedy escape into the open. This is
+usually the beginning of the most dangerous of
+all hallucinations in claustrophobia cases—the
+Persecution Complex. The husband feels that
+he is not only being boxed in, but persecuted.
+If deterioration is allowed to set in, the delusion
+of persecution may attain astounding proportions,
+such as that the Masons or the Pianomakers
+are against him, or that former Vice President
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>Charles G. Dawes is trying to “get”
+him. A case history will show how this happens.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c141" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c141.jpg" alt="Sketch of woman seated in front of fireplace, on the floor behind her a man is crawling on the floor. She is looking over her shoulder at him.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p class="noindent">“<i>He will strive to get out of
+    the house, and his wife should
+    allow him to go.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Case No. 22. <i>Personal History.</i> Normal birth
+and development. Born June 14, 1894. Had
+the usual childhood diseases with no sequelæ.
+No serious accidents or operations. Patient began
+school at the age of six, got along very
+well, graduating from high school at 18. Graduated
+from college at 22, and became an architect.
+He always held good positions with good
+salaries. Considered capable and efficient.
+Habits normal. Everything normal. Case
+married when he was 29.</p>
+
+<p><i>General Make-up.</i> Always considered keen,
+intelligent, amiable, and trusting. Liked outdoor
+activities, something of an athlete, with a
+strong urge to “get away by himself.” Began
+to be suspicious shortly after his marriage. He
+frequently showed this suspicion in his work by
+complaining to his associates that his ability was
+not recognized, and intimating that he thought
+the elevators in the building had purposely quit
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>stopping for him, so that he could not get out.
+Nervous. Jumpy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mental Examination.</i> Patient was very keen,
+alert, but suspicious when brought under observation.
+His demeanor was self-assertive, but he
+was inclined to be anxious and restless. He
+demanded his immediate freedom of the
+physicians who were examining him, and was
+greatly frightened. “Let’s get out of here!”
+he kept repeating to the doctors. He was allowed
+to depart, commitment to an institution
+not being thought necessary on the occasion of
+this first examination. Later the patient became
+violent. Would jump up from dinner table and
+cry, “Let’s get out of this!”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c145" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c145.jpg" alt="Sketch of man crouched between a table and a chair.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>Onset of the boxed-in feeling.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><i>Causation.</i> When examined for causation,
+the patient at first talked guardedly, and then
+incoherently. “Look out for the water!” he
+would say, and, again, “You can’t get out that
+way!” His physicians, unable to correlate his
+statements and his apprehensions, called in Dr.
+Damon Prill, the eminent New York psycho-analyst.
+“What have we here?” said Dr. Prill.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span>“Patient,” explained one of the doctors. “Look
+out for the water!” cried the patient. “Where
+did the water come from?” asked Dr. Prill,
+quietly. “From the drip-pan under the refrigerator,”
+said the patient. “Ah yes,” said Dr.
+Prill. “You can’t get out that way!” cried
+the case. “Now, why is it that we can’t get
+out that way?” asked Dr. Prill. “Because we
+are painted in,” said the patient. “Painted in,
+eh?” asked Dr. Prill. “You heard me,” said
+the patient. “Painted in, hammered in, pictured
+in, davenported in”—here he made a strange
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>twisting gesture with both hands, leaned forward,
+and ended, in a confidential whisper—“rolled
+up in a rug!”</p>
+
+<p>The reiteration of these incoherencies was all
+that Prill could get out of the patient, but it
+was enough to persuade him to question the
+man’s wife. He made some interesting discoveries.
+It turned out that the wife, one day, had
+asked her husband to keep his eye on the pan
+under the refrigerator and see that the water
+did not overflow, while she went to a bridge tea.
+The husband was home, going over some important
+plans. He forgot the pan and the place
+was flooded. The ceiling in the apartment below
+fell. The woman in the apartment below
+went all to pieces. The patient’s wife, returning
+from her tea, went all to pieces. The patient
+went all to pieces. Thus the hallucination
+formulated in his mind that being married and
+living in a house necessitated going to pieces.
+As for being “rolled up in a rug,” that, it transpired,
+had actually happened to him also. One
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span>day, during a thorough cleaning of the house,
+which his wife was superintending, she ordered
+two burly men to roll up a rug, without noticing
+that her husband was on it at the time. He was
+accordingly rolled up in it and had considerable
+difficulty getting out. As for being “painted
+in,” Prill established that the husband was also
+actually painted in on one occasion. He was
+in the bathroom shaving, and his wife did not
+know it. Thus she had a man paint the floors
+outside the bathroom, and when the husband
+opened the door to emerge, he couldn’t get out
+without stepping on the paint. He was about
+to step on the paint, anyway, when his wife saw
+him. “Here, here!” she said, “you can’t get
+out that way!” There was no other way out.
+“You’ll simply have to stay in there till the paint
+dries,” his wife told him, and he did.</p>
+
+<p>Prill explained to the wife what these inhibitions
+had done to her husband and that his condition
+was precarious. He stressed the importance
+of allowing her husband his freedom
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>at all times, paint or no paint. The husband
+was then brought back into the home and was
+allowed to live a free, unfettered existence, coming
+and going as he pleased—always, however,
+under the discreet surveillance of Dr. Prill.
+With that perspicacity of psycho-mental cases,
+however, that almost second sight, the patient
+became aware that some one was snooping
+around, watching him, and one night he leaped
+out of bed, pulled open the door of a little-used
+closet, and there was Dr. Prill watching.
+The patient, who otherwise might have been
+cured, went instantly into the last stages of the
+Persecution Complex.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_18_18" href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_18_18" href="#FNanchor_18_18" class="label">[18]</a> This discovery of Dr. Prill in the closet is one of the few blots
+on the splendid record of psycho-analysis, and is most unfortunate.</p></div>
+</div>
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c149" >
+  <img class="illowp60" src="images/i_c149.jpg" alt="Sketch of a man looking around the back of a chiar.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="noindent"><i>Fig. 14.</i> <i>Here we have that
+    strange, alert furtiveness
+    which instantly overtakes a
+    man when he beholds a
+    woman doing something which
+    he does not thoroughly understand.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The husband-patient began with the idea that
+he was being persecuted by the Detective Bureau
+of the Police Department and gradually enlarged
+his Apprehension Field until he believed
+he was also being persecuted by the Navy, the
+towns of Indianapolis and St. Louis, and the
+Box Manufacturers’ Association. He whispered
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>to doctors that a bearded man,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_19_19" href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> representing the
+Box Manufacturers, was following him around
+with a box and trying to catch him. Partly to
+avoid this imaginary menace, and also partly to
+stay off imaginary paint, the patient no longer
+walked on the floor, but on table tops, mantels,
+and so on, leaping around the room like an
+oriole. Unless watched, he would jump for
+the window-sills, and try to get out. He wrote
+to the Department of Justice at Washington,
+and finally to the President of the United States,
+protesting against the activities of the Order of
+the Eastern Star, the Railway Y. M. C. A., a
+Rev. W——, and the <cite>New York Times</cite>. The
+case was decreed hopeless in 1926. Later, the
+wife got a divorce and the husband seemed to
+improve. He was permitted to go to a ranch in
+Dakota, where he had a horse, a dog, and a pipe
+and was allowed to come and go as he liked.
+The last time I saw the patient, he was completely
+cured.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_19_19" href="#FNanchor_19_19" class="label">[19]</a> Dr. Prill wore a small, black beard.</p></div>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span></p>
+
+
+<h3 id="PREVENTION_OF_NUCLEAR_FEARS">
+  PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR FEARS
+</h3>
+
+<p>Prevention of the nuclear fears which lead to
+such cases of claustrophobia should be quite
+simple. A wife should strive at all times to give
+her husband at least the <i>illusion</i> that he is free
+to come and go. She should remember that it
+is the little things that count, that claustrophobia
+is brought on by an accumulation of small details,
+that it is, in fact, a tragedy of the trivial.
+If a husband uses a guest towel, he should be
+quietly reprimanded, but under no circumstances
+sent to his room. After pointing out,
+briefly, that the guest towels are not to be used,
+the wife might even give him a piece of bread
+and butter with sugar on it, or a kind word.
+Too many wives do not consider it important
+to explain the facts of the guest towel to their
+husbands. A wife expects her husband to pick
+up his knowledge in the gutter or from other
+husbands, who know as little about the actual
+truth as he does himself. If a husband uses a
+guest towel, he should be gently reproved and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span>then told where guest towels come from, in
+clear, simple language. The wife should lead
+him to the drawer where she keeps the guest
+towels and show him wherein they differ from
+ordinary towels—the kind he may use. The
+average guest towel can be identified by curious
+markings, either elaborate initials or picturesque
+designs in one corner or running all the
+way around the border. The husband should
+also be told that the use of such towels is not
+pleasurable, because of the discomfort caused
+by the hemstitching, the rough embroidery, and
+the like. He should be made to understand that
+no man ever uses a guest towel, either in his
+own home or when he is a guest somewhere else,
+that they are hung up for lady guests to look at
+and are not to be disturbed. If he is told these
+simple truths in a calm, unexcited way, the
+chances are that he will never use a guest towel
+again and that he won’t worry unduly over the
+consequences of his having used one once or
+twice. But as soon as he is given the idea that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span>he has done something terrible, that old feeling
+of being boxed in comes over him. He begins
+to think that he will never do anything right
+around the house, and that his home is merely
+a laboratory in which he has been trapped for
+the purpose of serving as the subject of strange
+experiments with towels and furniture.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c153" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c153.jpg"
+  alt="Sketch of man and woman in front of dresser.
+Woman is kneeling with a towel on her outstreched arm.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="noindent"><i>A wife should tell her husband
+    in clear, simple language
+    where guest towels come from.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The same rules should apply to husbands
+when they leave things lying around, or track
+in dirt, or forget to shut the refrigerator door.
+None of these faults is, after all, of very great
+importance, and they should be lightly dismissed.
+If they are presented as heinous crimes,
+the husband is going to be liable to the inception
+of a Persecution Complex and the slow
+deterioration of mind and spirit incident upon
+claustrophobia. A wife is forever taking it for
+granted that her husband should know as much
+about a household as she does. If she would
+only realize that things which are easy and uncomplicated
+to her are strange and mysterious to
+her husband, and explain the mysteries to him,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span>adjustments could be arrived at very simply,
+and sex would then have a chance to mean something.
+As an instance of what I mean take what
+happens during the average unpacking. A
+couple has just moved from one house to another,
+say, and the husband has been asked to
+help put things away. (He should not, of
+course, be asked, for the danger of that boxed-in
+feeling, with all of its awful consequences,
+is inherent in such a request.) As the things are
+taken out of trunks, the wife knows instantly
+where they go, not only the things she is going
+to use and wants put where she can get at them,
+but the things for which she has no immediate
+use and wishes stored away for the winter or
+summer, as the case may be. A woman can
+tell instantly whether a given article belongs
+in the attic or in the basement. All objects fall
+into one or the other of these two categories.
+For example, while I myself am not an expert
+at it, I am aware that anything framed or having
+wire attached to it goes to the attic, and that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span>most containers and the like, especially those
+made of metal, go to the basement. A woman
+comes naturally by this ability to discriminate.
+She knows most of it by intuition and the rest
+she has learned from her mother. But to suppose
+that a husband should know, offhand,
+whether a chest of drawers with woolens or
+dimity in it goes to the attic or the basement
+is ridiculous. You might as well expect him
+to understand, without long, careful instruction,
+why one tea towel is used for the china and
+another for the glassware. The thing for a wife
+to do, then, is not to upbraid or rebuff her husband
+when she finds him tired and worn in the
+attic, sitting among a lot of things that should
+have been taken to the basement, but simply to
+say nothing, or, better yet, compliment him on
+his strength and agility and then, next day, hire
+a handy man to shift the things to where they
+belong. Adherence to a few simple rules of
+solicitude and understanding would prevent
+nine husbands out of ten, no matter how passionately
+dedicated to liberty they may be, from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>falling victims to the dread claustrophobia
+which every year takes its heavy toll of male
+minds as the result of the carelessness or
+stupidity of wives.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c159_2" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c159.jpg"
+alt="Sketch of child, man, and woman. Man has a downcast posture.">
+</figure>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">
+    CHAPTER VIII
+<br><br>
+<span class="smcap">Frigidity in Men</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">I hesitate</span> to approach the subject of
+male unresponsiveness. Frigidity in men
+is a theme sociologists have avoided. Frigidity
+in women, on the other hand, forms a vast chapter
+in the sex research of today; the part it plays
+in marital discord is known to students of sociology
+as well as to the lay reader, although probably
+less well. It has occupied the attention of
+many noted writers, and has taken the lives of
+such men as Zaner and Tithridge, who carried
+some of their experiments too far.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_20_20" href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_20_20" href="#FNanchor_20_20" class="label">[20]</a> Tithridge especially.</p></div>
+</div>
+<p>Any discussion of frigidity in men calls for
+an unusual degree of frankness on the part of
+the writer, since it entails such factors as the
+“recessive knee,” Fuller’s retort, and the declination
+of the kiss. Further, before attacking this
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span>subject, it will be necessary to reëvaluate some
+of the more fundamental hypotheses of Man’s
+erotic nature, and what a nuisance that is going
+to be!</p>
+
+<p>Let us go back a little way. There are two
+fundamental urges in nature: the desire to eat
+and the desire to reproduce one’s kind. Which
+of these two impulses is the stronger depends
+somewhat on the individual and somewhat on
+the circumstances surrounding the individual—that
+is, it is apt to vary with the quality of the
+food and of the women. There are, Zaner
+shows, men who would rather eat than reproduce,
+and there are isolated cases of men who
+would rather reproduce than eat. But it is the
+less simple types that provide the important case
+histories for the student of masculine frigidity,
+and no broad conclusions can be drawn about
+the relative merits of eating and reproducing
+without a consideration of the contributing
+factors.</p>
+
+<p>Quite regardless of which urge comes first in
+Man’s scheme of existence, it is safe to state
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>dogmatically that the second urge (the “sex”
+urge) has caused more stir in the last few years
+than the first, or “nourishment,” urge. Sex is
+less than fifty years old, yet it has upset the
+whole Western World. The sublimation of
+sex, called Love, is of course much older—although
+many purists will question the existence
+of Love prior to about 1885 on the grounds that
+there can be no sublimation of a non-existent
+feeling. What I shall try to show, without carping,
+will be that there is a very good reason why
+the erotic side of Man has called forth so much
+more discussion lately than has his appetite for
+food. The reason is this: that while the urge
+to eat is a personal matter which concerns no
+one but the person hungry (or, as the German
+has it, <i lang="de">der <ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note&mdash;original text: hungrig" id="hungrig">hungrige</ins> Mensch</i>), the sex urge involves,
+for its true expression, another individual.
+It is this “other individual” that causes
+all the trouble.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c163" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c163.jpg" alt="Sketch of two couples, on in doorway sagging against each other, the other fallen on the stairs.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p>“<i>Just the minute another person is drawn into some one’s life,
+    there begin to arise undreamed-of complexities.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Except in rare instances, all of which have
+been dealt with by Sumner, the urge involves
+an individual of the opposite sex; that is, for a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>man it involves a woman, and for a woman it
+involves a man. I use the word “involve” advisedly.
+<i>Just the minute another person is
+drawn into some one’s life, there begin to arise
+undreamed-of complexities</i>, and from such a
+simple beginning as sexual desire we find built
+up such alarming yet familiar phenomena as
+<i lang="fr">fêtes</i>, <i lang="fr">divertissements</i>, telephone conversations,
+arrangements, plans, sacrifices, train arrivals,
+meetings, appointments, tardinesses, delays,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span>marriages, dinners, small pets and animals,
+calumny, children, music lessons, yellow shades
+for the windows, evasions, lethargy, cigarettes,
+candies, repetition of stories and anecdotes, infidelity,
+ineptitude, incompatibility, bronchial
+trouble, and many others, all of which are entirely
+foreign to the original urge and way off
+the subject, and all of which make the person’s
+existence so strangely bewildering that if he
+could have foreseen these developments his
+choice would have been the “eating” urge, and
+he would have just gone quietly out somewhere
+and ordered himself a steak and some French
+fried potatoes as being the easier way out.</p>
+
+<p>Still, that is just a hypothetical alternative.
+Life, as we know, is very insistent; almost daily
+people become involved with other people. And
+that brings us to our real theme, namely,
+frigidity in men.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Recessive Knee.</i> The first symptom of
+frigidity in men is what I call the recessive knee.
+To the study of this phenomenon I have given
+some of my best years. My laboratory has been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span>the laboratory of life itself. Probably I would
+never have discovered the recessive knee had I
+not noticed it, some ten years ago, in myself.
+Questioning my colleagues, I found to my
+amazement that they too had had similar experiences
+which they were unable to account
+for, and this led me to continue my investigations.
+Since then I have gone into taxicabs,
+terminal lunch rooms, boat liveries, and all other
+places where it is possible or usual for a girl to
+let her knee rest lightly against that of her companion,
+have gained the confidence of the young
+men and women whom I was watching, and
+have accumulated a mass of data showing that
+frigidity in men, instead of being almost a non-existent
+characteristic, is one of the commonest
+attributes of our national sexual life. Inasmuch
+as the juxtaposing of the knee by the female,
+which causes the recessive (or “pulled away”)
+knee in the male, usually occurs fairly soon after
+dinner, my experiments and observations have
+had to be made largely in the evening. It has
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span>been my custom to sleep late mornings to make
+up for this.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c166" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c166.jpg" alt="Sketch of man and woman seated next to each other, man has closed body posture, woman looks inquisitively at him, with her knee against his.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p>“<i>Occasions arise sometimes when a girl presses her knee,
+    ever so gently, against the knee of the young man she is
+    out with.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Simply stated, the knee phenomenon is this:
+occasions arise sometimes when a girl presses
+her knee, ever so gently, against the knee of the
+young man she is out with. The juxtaposing of
+the knee is brought about by any of a thousand
+causes. Often the topic of conversation has
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>something to do with it: the young people, talking
+along pleasantly, will suddenly experience
+a sensation of compatibility, or of friendliness,
+or of pity, or of community-of-interests. One
+of them will make a remark singularly agreeable
+to the other person—a chance word or phrase
+that seems to establish a bond between them.
+Such a remark can cause the knee of the girl
+to be placed against the knee of the young man.
+Or, if the two people are in a cab, the turning of
+a sharp corner will do it. In canoes, the wash
+from a larger vessel will bring it about. In
+restaurants and dining-rooms it often takes place
+under the table, as though by accident. On
+divans, sofas, settees, couches, davenports, and
+the like, the slight twist of the young lady’s
+body incident to receiving a light for her cigarette
+will cause it. I could go on indefinitely,
+but there is no need. It is not a hard push, you
+understand—rather the merest touch of knee to
+knee, light as the brush of a falling blossom
+against one’s cheek, and just as lovely.</p>
+
+<p>Now, a normal male in whom there are no
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span>traces of frigidity will allow his knee to retain
+its original position, sometimes even exerting
+a very slight counter-pressure. A frigid male,
+however, will move his knee away at the first
+suggestion of contact, denying himself the electric
+stimulus of love’s first stirring. Why? That
+is what my research was conducted to discover.
+<i>I found that in 93 per cent of all cases, the male
+was suspicious; in 4 per cent he was ignorant;
+and in 3 per cent he was tired.</i> I have presented
+these figures to the American Medical Association
+and am awaiting a reply.</p>
+
+<p>It is the female’s subtlety in her laying-on of
+the knee that annoys the male, I found. His
+recession is for the purpose of reassuring himself
+of his own integrity and perspicacity. If
+the female were to juxtapose in a forthright
+manner, if she were to preface her gesture with
+the remark: “I am thinking of letting my knee
+touch yours for the fun of it, Mortimer,” she
+might gain an entirely different response from
+the male.</p>
+
+<p>Many men with recessive knees have confided
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>to me that they felt incapable of answering the
+pressure because of the effect it might have on
+their minds, with the accompanying loss of self-respect.
+I have established the fact that no
+<i>physical</i> detriment is incurred by answered
+pressure—the only harmful effects are psychological.
+Some males admitted to an unwillingness
+to give any woman the satisfaction of believing
+that she was able to take her companion
+unaware. Still others told me that they feared
+the consequences of such an act: they were
+afraid that if ever they let down the bars and
+failed to turn away from knee pressure, they
+would likewise be unable to resist other juxtapositions
+in life and would continually be responding
+amiably to other amusing stimuli—sales
+talks, stock promotion, and the like.</p>
+
+<p>It was a young Paterson, N. J., girl by the
+name of Lillian Fuller who let drop the remark
+that has epitomized, for the sociological and
+anthropological world, the phenomenon of the
+recessive knee. “Fuller’s retort” is now a common
+phrase in the realm of psychotherapy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span></p>
+
+<p>Miss Fuller was an unusually beautiful
+woman—young, accurate, sensitive. She was
+greatly attached to a man several years her
+senior in the buffing department; wanted to
+marry him. To this end she had laid her knee
+against his innumerable times without a single
+return of pressure. His frigidity, she realized,
+was gradually becoming prejudicial to his mental
+health, and so one evening, after experiencing
+for the hundredth time the withdrawal of
+his knee, she simply turned to him with a quiet
+smile playing on her face and said, “Say, what
+is the matter with you, anyway?”</p>
+
+<p>Her retort somehow summed up the whole
+question of frigidity in men.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Declination of the Kiss.</i>&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_21_21" href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> Many men have
+told me that they would not object to sex were
+it not for its contactual aspect. That is, they
+said they would be perfectly willing to express
+their eroticism if it could be done at a reasonable
+distance—say fifty paces. These men (the
+frigid-<i>plus</i> type) found kissing intolerable.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_21_21" href="#FNanchor_21_21" class="label">[21]</a> Now we’re getting down to business.</p></div>
+</div>
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c171">
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c171.jpg" alt="Sketch of man and woman embracing in park, solitary dejected man looks over at them.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p class="noindent">“<i>Many men have told me
+    that they would not object
+    to sex were it not for its contactual
+    aspect.</i>” (<i>One such
+    man is shown in the background.</i>)</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span></p>
+
+<p>When they had an opportunity to kiss a young
+lady, they declined. They made it plain that
+they would be willing to blow a kiss across
+the room from their hand, but not execute it
+with their lips.</p>
+
+<p>I analyzed scores of these cases, questioning
+both the women and the men. (The women
+were mad as hornets.) I found that a small
+number of the kiss-declining men were suffering
+from a pathology of the eyes—either astigmatism
+or farsightedness—so that when they got
+really close to a girl, she blurred on them.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_22_22" href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> The
+vast majority of cases, however, were quite different.
+Their unwillingness I traced to a much
+subtler feeling than eye-strain. Your true anti-contactual,
+or kiss-decliner, is a very subtle individual
+indeed.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><div class="footnote"><p class="noindent"><a id="Footnote_22_22" href="#FNanchor_22_22" class="label">[22]</a> Incidentally, I might say that this blurring of the female before
+the eyes of the male is not entirely unpleasant. It’s kind of
+fun.</p></div></div>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c174" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c174.jpg" alt="Sketch of man playing guitar.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p>“<i>Love had a simple directness which was not disturbed
+    until the arrival, in the land, of the minnesingers.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>In effect, he is a throw-back to another period
+in history, specifically to the Middle Ages. He
+is a biological sport. (Note: this is very confusing,
+calling him a “sport,” because the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>ordinary “sport” is not a kiss-decliner at all—anything
+but. Please keep in mind, then, that
+when I use the term “sport” I want the strict
+biological interpretation put upon the word. I
+want it, and I intend to get it. If there are any
+of you who think you are going to find the use
+of the word “sport” in this connection so confusing
+as to make the rest of the chapter unintelligible,
+I wish you would drop out. Get
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>something else to read, or, better yet, get some
+exercise.)</p>
+
+<p>No one can quite comprehend the motives
+and the successes of a kiss-decliner who does not
+recall his counterpart in mediæval history. In
+the Middle Ages, when men were lusty and full
+of red meat, their women expected as much. A
+baronial fellow, finishing his meal, made no ado
+about kissing a Middle Age woman. He just
+got up from the table and kissed her. Bango,
+and she was kissed. Love had a simple directness
+which was not disturbed until the arrival,
+in the land, of the <i>minnesingers</i>. It got so no
+baronial hall of the Middle Ages was free from
+these <i>minnesingers</i>. They kept getting in. They
+would bring their harps with them, and after
+dinner they would twang a couple of notes and
+then sing a frail, delicate song to the effect that
+women should be worshiped from afar, rather
+than possessed. To a baron who had just drunk
+a goblet of red wine, this new concept of
+womanhood was screamingly funny. While he
+was chuckling away to himself and cutting himself
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span>another side of beef, his wife, who had
+listened attentively to the song, would slip out
+into the alley behind the castle and there the
+<i>minnesinger</i> would join her.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp90" id="i_c176" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c176.jpg" alt="Sketch of man seated crosslegged, face resting on one hand.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p><i>Mediæval baron, amused at minnesinger’s concept of
+    Woman.</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>“Sing that one again,” she would say.</p>
+
+<p>“Which one?”</p>
+
+<p>“That one about worshiping me from a little
+distance. I want to hear that one again.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span></p>
+
+<p>The <i>minnesinger</i> would oblige. Then he
+would illustrate the theme by <i>not</i> kissing the
+woman, but dancing off lightly down the hill,
+throwing his harp up into the air and catching
+it again as he went.</p>
+
+<p>“What a nice young man,” the baron’s wife
+would think, as she slowly turned and went
+in to bed.</p>
+
+<p>The kiss-decliner of today is a modern <i>minnesinger</i>.
+He is a sport in that he has varied
+suddenly from the normal type—which is still
+baronial. Of course, the amusing thing about
+his conduct is that oftentimes a woman assumes
+that she is being worshiped from afar, when as
+a matter of fact she is merely being <i>ignored from
+afar</i>. That is part of the trick of an anti-contactual
+person—he takes a perverse delight in
+allowing the woman whose kiss he has declined,
+to think of him as more lyrical than other men.
+When he leaves her presence, she is apt to think
+of him as off somewhere by the bank of a stream,
+lying flat on his back, his shaggy head buried in
+the tall grasses, dreaming of something or other—probably
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span>of her, whereas, if she would take
+the trouble to go to the nearest Liggett’s drug
+store she would probably find him there, getting
+a sundæ.</p>
+
+<p>By the mere gesture of declining a kiss a man
+can still make quite a lot of ground, even in
+these depleted days. The woman thinks: “He
+would not dream of embracing my body; now
+that’s pretty white of him!” Of course, it would
+be wrong to ascribe motives of sheer deliberateness
+to the frigid male. Often he is not a bad
+sort—merely is a fellow who prefers an imagined
+kiss to the real kind. An imagined kiss
+is more easily controlled, more thoroughly enjoyed,
+and less cluttery than an actual kiss. To
+kiss in dream is wholly pleasant. First, the
+woman is the one of your selection, not just
+anyone who happens to be in your arms at the
+moment. Second, the deed is garnished with
+a little sprig of glamour which the mind, in exquisite
+taste, contributes. Third, the lips,
+imaginatively, are placed just so, the right hand
+is placed just so, the concurrent thoughts arrive,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span>just so. Except for the fact that the whole
+episode is a little bit stuffy, it is a superior experience
+all round. When a kiss becomes actual,
+anything is likely to happen. The lips, failing
+of the mark, may strike lightly against the end
+of the lady’s nose, causing the whole adventure
+to crack up; or the right hand may come in contact
+with the hard, jagged part of the shoulder
+blade; or, worst of all, the man’s thoughts may
+not clothe the moment with the proper splendor:
+he may be worrying about something.</p>
+
+<p>So you see, frigidity in men has many aspects,
+many angles. To me it is vastly more engrossing
+than frigidity in women, which is such a
+simple phenomenon you wonder anybody
+bothers about it at all.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="ANSWERS_TO_HARD_QUESTIONS">
+    ANSWERS TO HARD QUESTIONS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="noindent pb2">[Note: These questions have been selected from
+among the many thousand inquiries that were received
+by Dr. Karl Zaner during the past year. They
+come from people who are sexually inquisitive—people
+from every walk of life. The authors wish
+to thank Dr. Zaner for allowing them to have access
+to his sex files. It is with a sense of high adventure
+that we face the task of answering, to the best of
+our ability, these perplexing questions that deal so
+intimately with human lives.—<span class="smcap">The Authors.</span>]</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><i>Q.</i> <i>My youngest boy, age 28, turned against love
+because in a book he was reading, where the writer
+meant to say, “A woman in love is sacred” there was
+a misprint and it came out, “A woman in love is
+scared.” How would you go about this?</i></p>
+
+<p><i>A.</i> We do not regard the case as typical. Presumably
+your boy is badly frightened himself, or he
+wouldn’t be reading books; he would be out somewhere.
+The way to overcome this is to build up his
+general health.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><i>Q.</i> <i> Should a woman live with her husband if they
+are separated?</i></p>
+
+<p><i>A.</i> Yes. There is nothing that brings two people
+so close together as separation. In situations of the
+sort, the woman’s presence gradually becomes necessary
+on account of the condition of the man’s shirts.
+On first being separated from his wife, the husband
+commonly will be found to neglect his dirty clothes,
+from spite and from self-indulgence. Instead of
+gathering them into a pile and sending them to a
+laundry, he will put on yesterday’s shirt in the morning,
+and stop in a gentleman’s furnishing store to
+pick up a clean one on the way to the office. This
+procedure has a threefold allure for the man. First,
+it gets him to the office half an hour late; second,
+it takes him into a furnishing store; and third, when
+he looks into his shirt drawer in the morning and
+finds no shirts it assures him of the disorganized
+state of his life. To feel disorganized is to be perfectly
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>Things might go on this way indefinitely were
+it not for the economic side of the question. At
+three dollars a shirt (which is a conservative figure
+for a man separated from his wife) the shirt bill
+runs into eighteen dollars a week, plus another six
+dollars for underwear and socks. Furthermore, there
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>is now a congested condition in the husband’s office,
+caused by the accumulation of dirty shirts which he
+has tucked into bottom drawers and filing cabinets.
+This shows up in his work.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter w100" id="i_c182" >
+  <img class="illowp90" src="images/i_c182.jpg" alt="Sktech of man changing clothes in front of a dresser.">
+  <figcaption class="captionblock">
+      <p>“<i>On first being separated from his wife, the husband commonly
+    will be found to neglect his dirty clothes, from
+    spite and from self-indulgence. Instead of gathering them
+    into a pile and sending them to the laundry, he will put
+    on yesterday’s shirt in the morning, and stop in a gentlemen’s
+    furnishing store to pick up a clean one on the
+    way to the office.</i>”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The impracticability of two people living apart
+becomes apparent, too, in the matter of the old 1916
+Cadillac touring car which they own. On separating,
+the husband will generously give the car to his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span>wife to use, but that doesn’t alter the fact that he,
+and he alone, knows what you have to do when the
+car “does that funny thing.” Thus, the husband is
+apt any time during the day to pick up the phone
+and hear his wife’s voice:</p>
+
+<p>“Dear, I’m on the Merrick Road between Bellport
+and Patchogue, and the car is doing that funny
+thing again.” This means dropping whatever work
+he is doing, taking a cab to the Penn station and a
+Long Island train to the scene of the breakdown.
+This also shows up in his work. It never could
+happen if husband and wife were living together,
+because in that case they would never be on cordial
+enough terms for him to let her use the car.</p>
+
+<p>There is another phase of separation that is perhaps
+more alarming than those we have mentioned,
+namely, the possible effect the news of it might
+have on the health of the wife’s parents or the
+health of the husband’s parents. I recall the case
+of a couple who over a period of years tried to
+live apart without telling the wife’s mother—who
+had a frail heart and who liked to see young people
+together, not apart. (Note: old ladies don’t know
+<i>why</i> they like to see young people together—they
+can give no reason; yet just the thought of two
+young people separating excites them unduly, and,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>when their heart is unreliable, is apt to carry them
+off.) So this young pair, out of consideration, although
+separated, sent community Christmas presents
+to the parents and wrote letters describing
+joint experiences, until, after two years and eight
+months of struggling along and scheming, they
+finally gave up the battle and decided it would be
+simpler to take an apartment together somewhere.
+Sheer fatigue united them. They are residing, to
+this day, in North Pelham, and the wife’s mother is
+still alive and well. Getting better every day, doctors
+say.</p>
+
+<p>So our advice to any couple is just this: separate
+if you must, but by all means live together—no matter
+how your friends and neighbors talk.</p>
+
+<p class="p2"><i>Q.</i> <i> I have an aquarium and I got a snail for it
+because they told me it would keep the water clean,
+and the snail unexpectedly bore young, although it
+was in there all alone. I mean there weren’t any
+other snails in there, only fish. How could it have
+young, very well?</i></p>
+
+<p><i>A.</i> The snail in your aquarium is a mollusc. It is
+quite likely an hermaphrodite, even though it came
+from a reputable department store. For being
+hermaphroditic, nobody can blame a snail. We cannot
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>tell you everything we know about the gastropods
+because we know, possibly, more than is good
+for us. In the absence of specific information to
+the contrary, we would say that the snail in your
+aquarium had been going around a good deal with
+other snails before you got him (her). Some molluscs
+(not many) can have children merely by sitting
+around and thinking about it. Others can have
+children by living in a state of reciprocity with other
+hermaphrodites. Still others are like us, diœcious,
+possessed of only one sexual nature but thankful for
+small favors.</p>
+
+<p>The shellfish and the snails are a great group,
+though it is a pose with many people to consider
+them dull. Usually the people who find molluscs
+dull are dull themselves. We have met molluscs in
+many parts of the world: in gardens in France, on
+the rocks at low tide on Long Island Sound, in household
+aquaria, on the sidewalks of suburban towns
+in the early mornings, in restaurants, and in forests.
+Everywhere we found them to be sensitive creatures,
+imaginative and possessed of a lively sense of earth’s
+pleasant rhythm. Snails have a kind of nobility.
+Zoölogists will tell you that they occupy, in the
+animal kingdom, a position of enviable isolation.
+They go their own way.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span></p>
+
+<p>We can understand your curiosity about sex in
+snails. Molluscs are infinitely varied in their loves,
+their hates, and their predilections. They have a
+way of carrying out ideas they get in their head.
+They are far from cold, as many people suppose
+them; indeed, one of the most fascinating love stories
+we ever read was in the <cite>Cambridge Natural History</cite>,
+in which was described the tryst kept by a pair of
+snails on a garden wall. We have never forgotten
+the first sentence of that romantic and idyllic tale,
+nor have we forgotten the name of the snail,
+L. Maximus. The story started: “L. Maximus has
+been observed at midnight to ascend a wall or some
+perpendicular surface.” It then went on to relate
+how, after some moments spent greeting each other,
+crawling round and round, the snails let themselves
+down on a little ladder of their own devising, and
+there, suspended in the air ten inches or so from
+the top of the wall, they found love.</p>
+
+<p>Often very fecund, molluscs are rarely too busy
+to give attention to their children after birth, or to
+prepare for their coming. There is, in Algeria, a
+kind of mollusc whose young return for shelter to
+the body of their mother, somewhat in the manner
+of little kangaroos. There is, in the Philippines, a
+snail who is so solicitous for her expected babies
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span>that she goes to the trouble of climbing, with infinite
+pains and no little discomfort, to the top of a tall
+tree, and there deposits her eggs in a leaf, folding
+the leaf adroitly for protection. Another kind of
+mollusc, having laid her eggs upon a stone, amuses
+herself by arranging them like the petals of a rose,
+and hatches them by holding her foot on them.
+Molluscs tend to business.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes different species intermarry, but this is
+rare. The interesting point about it is that such
+unions generally take place when the air is heavily
+charged with electricity, as before a storm, or when
+great rains have made the earth wet. The Luxembourg
+Garden in Paris is a place snails go to for
+clandestine matches of this sort. H. Variabilis goes
+there, and Pisana. The moisture, the electricity, the
+fragrant loveliness of a Paris night, stir them
+strangely.</p>
+
+<p>Probably, if you know so little of the eroticism of
+snails, you have not heard of the darts some of them
+carry—tiny daggers, hard and sharp, with which
+they prick each other for the excitement it affords.
+These darts are made of carbonate of lime. The
+Germans call them <i lang="de">Liebespfeil</i>, “love shaft.” Many
+British molluscs are without them, but that’s the way
+it goes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span></p>
+
+<p>We could tell much more. We could tell about
+molluscs that possess the curious property of laying
+their eggs on the outside of their own shell, and of
+the strange phenomenon of the Cephalopod, who,
+when he takes leave of his lady, leaves one of his
+arms with her, so that she may never lack for an
+embrace. But we feel we have answered your question.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="GLOSSARY">
+    GLOSSARY
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="hang2">
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Aaron’s Disease</span>: Put in here merely because it
+might confuse the reader if we started right off
+with Admiral Schley.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Admiral Schley</span>: American naval hero in whose
+splendid achievements men took an interest
+when their absorption in love died down, circa
+1900.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Amatory Instincts</span>: Interest in sex.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Apathy</span>: Almost total loss of interest in sex.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Atrophy</span>: Total loss of interest in sex.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Attack</span>: Man’s method of showing interest in
+women, so called because of his brusque desire
+to get at the matter in hand and have done
+with it.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Begonia-ism</span>: Tendency of the male to raise small
+potted plants, and not go out.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Benign Stupor</span>: Alarming condition in a husband
+or lover which causes him to sit around in his
+bathrobe and slippers, brooding, instead of
+working or anything.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span></p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Biologico-cultural</span>: A feminine type; one who
+expresses her erotic nature verbally.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Bother</span>: Annoyance; frequently confused with
+“pother,” which means uncalled-for interest in
+something, usually sex.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Boxed-in</span>: Caught, or trapped, as a husband by a
+wife, or the delusion of being caught or trapped.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Butcher’s Twine</span>: A kind of stout cord of no particular
+interest to anybody.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Causation</span>: The factors back of a male’s doubt or
+suspicion.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Charades</span>: (1) Parlor game devised by women to
+fend off men (1900–1909); (2) acting up in a
+skittish manner about the facts of life, instead
+of getting right down to them; twitching, nervous
+twitching.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Complex</span>: Mental crack-up caused by an emotional,
+or physical, inability to get away from, or wind
+things up with, a person of the opposite sex.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Complex, Nuclear</span>: Shock caused by discovery of
+a person of the opposite sex in his or her true
+colors; beginning of a general breakdown.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Defense</span>: Feminine excuses, tricks, devices, etc.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Delay Mechanism</span>: Pother.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Deterioration</span> (<span class="smcap">Benign</span>): Going quietly to pieces
+as the result of marriage or a love affair.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span></p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Deterioration</span> (<span class="smcap">Malignant</span>): Going loudly to
+pieces under the same circumstances; fidgeting,
+bawling, berating, etc.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Diversion Subterfuge</span>: Trick employed by women
+to keep men’s minds on ethereal, rather than
+physical, matters.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Empiric</span>: National viewpoint of sex.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Erotic</span>: Of or pertaining to sex, usually in a pretty
+far-fetched manner.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Exhibitionism</span>: Going too far, but not really meaning
+it.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Exotic</span>: Of an alarming nature, particularly to
+parents.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Fixation</span>: Too great dependence on one woman.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Fragmentation of Personality</span>: Inception of
+general decline on the part of the male.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Frigidity</span> (in men): Suspicion, ignorance, or fatigue,
+mostly suspicion.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Fudge-making</span>: Feminine trick or device.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Fuller’s Retort</span>: A remark made by a Paterson,
+N. J., girl one night in Paterson, N. J.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">George Smith</span>: A despondent Indianapolis real-estate
+man. Pulling a George Smith: attempting
+to find something more important than, and
+just as interesting as, women.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Julia Marlowe</span>: Actress.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span></p>
+
+<p class="hang2" id="libido"><span class="smcap">Libido</span>: “Pleasure-principle.”</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Looseness of Systematization</span>: The going to
+pieces of a husband.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Love</span>: The pleasant confusion which we know exists.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Loving</span>: Being confused by, or confusing some one.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Masculine Protest</span>: Male disdain for things which
+he does not understand.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Narcissism</span>: Attempt to be self-sufficient, with overtones.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Neuro-vegetative Reflexes</span>: A male’s, particularly
+a husband’s, quick, unpremeditated reactions
+to stewed vegetables, especially spinach,
+and to certain salads.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Neurosis</span>: The beginning of the end, unless the
+husband can go away somewhere.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Neurotic</span>: Wanting something, but she doesn’t
+know what; desirous of something she hasn’t
+got and probably can’t, or shouldn’t, have.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">1907, Panic of</span>: Result of woman’s inhumanity to
+man (1900–1907).</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">No Better Than She Ought to Be</span> (woman’s
+definitions): (1) indiscreet; (2) charming;
+(3) pretty and vivacious; (4) oversexed; (5)
+living in sin.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Norm</span>: All Quiet.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Numerical Protection</span>: Other people in the room.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span></p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Osculatory Justification</span>: Reasons for kissing,
+growing out of the early American credo that
+kissing for kissing’s sake would send one
+straight to hell.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Paranoia</span>: The last stages of what was once a
+bridegroom.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Passion</span>: Expression of the sex principle without
+so much fuss.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Pedestalism</span>: The American male’s reverence for
+the female or, better yet, her insistence on being
+revered, which amounts to the same thing.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Physico-Psychic</span>: State in which the physical gets
+tangled up with the spiritual, after the manner
+of a setter pup throwing a huntsman by getting
+between his feet.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Pleasure-principle</span>: See <a href="#libido">Libido</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Possessive Complex</span>: Innocent desire to kiss and
+fondle, sometimes to maul or wool.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Pother</span>: Uncalled-for interest in something—almost
+always sex.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Protective Reaction</span>: Putting a man in his place.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Psyche</span>: Wings for the feet of clay.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Psycho-neurosis</span>: Same as neurosis, only worse.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Psychosis</span>: State of being beside oneself to such an
+extent that it is doubtful if one can pull oneself
+together.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span></p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Pulled-away</span>: Refers to the knee of a man who is
+suspicious or tired.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Recessive Knee</span>: The outstanding phenomenon of
+masculine frigidity; man’s refusal to answer the
+pressure.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Schmalhausen, Samuel D.</span>: Student of misbehavior.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap" id="Sch_troub">Schmalhausen Trouble</span>: Illness commonly found
+in young ladies who read in cramped quarters.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Smith, George</span>: Same as George Smith.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Swastika</span>: Symbol which distracted American suitors
+used to scrawl on desk pads, margins of
+books, and so on.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Trouble, Schmalhausen</span>: See <a href="#Sch_troub">Schmalhausen trouble</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap" lang=de>Übertragung</span>: Period of transition during which
+the male strives to transmute his ardor for
+women into the semblance of ardor for games.</p>
+
+<p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">Voyeurism</span>: Sex Kibitzing.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="A_NOTE_ON_THE_DRAWINGS_IN_THIS_BOOK">
+    A NOTE ON THE DRAWINGS IN THIS BOOK
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The inclusion, in this volume, of some fifty-two
+drawings by James Thurber, was on the whole intentional.
+Because, however, of the strong feeling
+of suspicion which they will arouse in certain quarters,
+it may not be amiss to offer some explanation.
+For this task I feel peculiarly fitted, for it was I who,
+during those trying months when the book was in
+the making, picked up the drawings night after night
+from the floor under Thurber’s desk, picked them
+up when I was so tired in body and soul that I could
+scarcely stoop; it was I who, by gaining the confidence
+of the charwomen, nightly redeemed countless
+other thousands of unfinished sketches from the huge
+waste baskets; and finally, it was my incredible willingness
+to go through with the business of “inking-in”
+the drawings (necessitated by the fact that they
+were done in such faint strokes of a broken pencil as
+to be almost invisible to the naked eye) that at last
+brought them to the point where they could be engraved
+and reproduced.</p>
+
+<p>To understand, even vaguely, Thurber’s art, it is
+necessary to grasp the two major themes which underlie
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>all his drawings. The first theme is what I
+call the “melancholy of sex”; the other is what I can
+best describe as the “implausibility of animals.”
+These two basic ideas motivate, subconsciously, his
+entire creative life. Just how some of the animals
+shown in these pages “come in” is not clear even
+to me—except in so far as any animal must be
+regarded as sexually relevant because of our human
+tendency to overestimate what can be learned from
+watching it.</p>
+
+<p>When one studies the drawings, it soon becomes
+apparent that a strong undercurrent of grief runs
+through them. In almost every instance the <i>man</i>
+in the picture is badly frightened, or even hurt.
+These “Thurber men” have come to be recognized
+as a distinct type in the world of art; they are
+frustrated, fugitive beings; at times they seem vaguely
+striving to get out of something without being seen
+(a room, a situation, a state of mind), at other times
+they are merely perplexed and too humble, or weak,
+to move. The <i>women</i>, you will notice, are quite
+different: temperamentally they are much better adjusted
+to their surroundings than are the men, and
+mentally they are much less capable of making themselves
+uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>It would be foolish to attempt here a comprehensive
+appreciation of the fierce sweep, the economy,
+and the magnificent obscurity of Thurber’s work,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span>nor can I adequately indicate the stark qualities in
+the drawings that have earned for him the title of
+“the Ugly Artist.” All I, all anybody, can do is to
+hint at the uncanny faithfulness with which he has
+caught—caught and thrown to the floor—the daily,
+indeed the almost momently, severity of life’s mystery,
+as well as the charming doubtfulness of its purpose.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+  <span class="pad1r">E. B. W.</span>
+</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp40" id="i_c198" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c198.jpg" alt="House of Harper logo.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p>THE HOUSE OF HARPER</p>
+      <p class="hang2"><span class="smcap">New York</span></p>
+      <p>Publishers of BOOKS and of
+    <span class="smcap">Harper’s Magazine</span></p>
+      <p><i>Established 1817</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+
+<figure class="figright illowp35" id="i_c203" >
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_c203.jpg"
+alt="Sketch of man holding folded umbrella, hand outstretched to catch water drops from above.">
+</figure>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter transnote" id="END_NOTE">
+    <strong>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE</strong>
+
+
+<p class="noindent">Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
+and outside quotations.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
+corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
+the text and consultation of external sources.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added,
+when a predominant preference was found in the original book.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
+and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.</p>
+
+<table class="autotable">
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#chicka">Pg 16</a>:
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+“Chickamaugua” replaced with “Chickamauga”.
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Schmaulhausen">89</a>:
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+“Schmaulhausen” replaced with “Schmalhausen”.
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#hungrig">162</a>:
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+“hungrig” replaced with “hungrige”.
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77883 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/77883-h/images/cover.jpg b/77883-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..972f815
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_a001.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_a001.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b5a0c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_a001.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_b002b.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_b002b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2dec3ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_b002b.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_b003.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_b003.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2dcecc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_b003.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_b004.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_b004.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a985e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_b004.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_b007.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_b007.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4c5ca5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_b007.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_b009.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_b009.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..65fba94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_b009.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_b015.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_b015.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c78cc5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_b015.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_b021.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_b021.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d03b5d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_b021.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_b023.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_b023.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0677694
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_b023.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c005.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c005.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..daaab39
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c005.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c007.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c007.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..61e5aa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c007.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c009.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c009.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c0481ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c009.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c013.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c013.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0f65278
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c013.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c016.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c016.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2cedaa5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c016.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c018.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c018.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..72c8dda
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c018.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c021.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c021.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a849b23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c021.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c024.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c024.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2258776
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c024.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c027.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c027.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9709cbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c027.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c031.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c031.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..068e5ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c031.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c033.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c033.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..634c727
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c033.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c035.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c035.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..db25931
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c035.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c037.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c037.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ae887e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c037.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c041.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c041.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c681e50
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c041.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c047.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c047.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b9d0c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c047.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c052.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c052.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98083d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c052.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c056.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c056.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a383af
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c056.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c061.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c061.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f748bec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c061.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c064.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c064.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9ab324
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c064.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c067.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c067.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd5d68d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c067.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c069.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c069.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45a5a96
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c069.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c075.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c075.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ccf98b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c075.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c079.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c079.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1cd73ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c079.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c081.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c081.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98bea0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c081.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c085.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c085.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96657ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c085.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c088.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c088.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..308ef03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c088.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c093.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c093.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3d2fbf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c093.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c098.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c098.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7407ee3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c098.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c105.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c105.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8680c8b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c105.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c109.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c109.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..735f4a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c109.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c115.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c115.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..849e681
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c115.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c117.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c117.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd0daa4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c117.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c123.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c123.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1a741d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c123.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c128.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c128.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2dcdd48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c128.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c129.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c129.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d4d0e57
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c129.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c130.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c130.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bae1f13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c130.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c132.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c132.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4d6cfb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c132.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c141.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c141.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dc66a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c141.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c145.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c145.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c273c61
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c145.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c149.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c149.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5898b99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c149.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c153.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c153.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b518392
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c153.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c159.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c159.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9c9da56
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c159.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c163.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c163.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21fcd61
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c163.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c166.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c166.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04d1bd8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c166.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c171.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c171.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ee0557
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c171.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c174.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c174.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6ee91e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c174.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c176.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c176.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2610700
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c176.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c182.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c182.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad232a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c182.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c198.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c198.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c7c783b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c198.jpg
diff --git a/77883-h/images/i_c203.jpg b/77883-h/images/i_c203.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..484f5df
--- /dev/null
+++ b/77883-h/images/i_c203.jpg
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c72794
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62fbe28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #77883
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77883)