Chapter I: Preface

If you do not want to hear the truth about things which have been greeted with that most dangerous weapon, “S-s-s-sh,” don’t read this book, said weapon being to my mind more dangerous to the development of the human mind and soul than the machine gun is to the body of a man placed in front of the firing line.

I believe the time has come when there should be less secrecy about matters which are at the root of many evils of today. Not a new thought. Many are thinking along those lines and many are accepting very frank articles now written on sex problems which bear on the conduct of the youth of today.

Novels are being written dealing in open terms with the so-called normal types of humans, leading one through the various channels of lovemaking and the resultant episodes, leaving nothing to the imagination, but supplying a few asterisks to conform to the ideas of the snooping reformers and self-appointed censors.

This book is not fiction. I am writing of my own life; my actual experiences from my earliest recollection to the age of nearly seventy years.

Many will declare it to have been an abnormal life. I do not believe every woman has been through all the experiences that I have (I certainly hope not for their sakes), but I do believe that every woman has had some of the problems that I have had to face.

Many will deny a knowledge of any of them, afraid to acknowledge even to themselves the whole truth. In judging reactions in a child’s mind, I ask the readers of today to remember that I was born in 1864, and also to realize the atmosphere of the home life of that period.

I expect to speak openly of things which, in the modern novel, are represented by asterisks; on the stage by the lowering of the curtain; in the press many times without restriction, but as ordinary “news” to sell the paper, and in conversation by a rising of the eyebrows or a shrug of the shoulders.

It has taken courage to bare the facts of an extraordinary life, but it is done with the sincere hope that it may throw light from a new and different angle on the effort of the parent to understand children, and also to bring out the thought that without truth nothing may be accomplished in this life.