[No doubt in this I tread but in the ordinary footsteps and ways of male-kind. What I have done, thousands of others are doing. It is only when lustful impetuosity is weakened that reflexion and experience begin to devise new pleasures to aid it. As we get older we invent them as a stimulus, and woman thus become more and more charming, needful, and important to us; and just at a time when our responsibilities towards them become greatest. So by aiding and administering to us in our salacious devices, they reward us. In the end they are more and more needful to us, and we repay them by our generosity, our care of them, and our sacrifices for them. Nor are they behind us in desire to participate in these frolics, for they have lust as well as we. In a quiet, hidden way, they like lasciviousness if taught it gradually. But lust is mainly in we men — women are the ministers to it, it is the law of nature. — No blame attaches to woman for liking or for submitting to such frolics, abnormal whims, and fancies, which fools call obscene, but which are natural and proper, and perhaps universally practised, and which concern only those who practise and profit by them. In my experience many women delight equally in them, when their imaginations are once evoked. Nothing can perhaps be justly called unnatural which nature prompts us to do. If others don't like them, they are not natural to them, and no one should force them to act them.

[The foregoing and similar paragraphs, written long after the manuscript, are to be enclosed in brackets thus [ ] so that I may identify them when I see them (if I do) at a future day in print, and this writing destroyed.

[The headings of the chapters are now written for the first time. — They will be needful if this be printed. Now I resume my narrative.]

Whilst away I arranged it, and directly on my return to England gave up a snug, quiet, illicit establishment elsewhere, and to the satisfaction of both parties. Both agreed to it, and thought it was for the best. We had no quarrel. It cost much money down, and an annuity paid still, but no one was injured, no one wronged. All interested were provided for. I wonder if this will ever meet her eyes, or if so if she will know that it refers to her. It is not probable, for neither names, places, nor initials are given, and no clue afforded; yet nothing is impossible.

I had not returned to England a fortnight before a domestic turn-out took place, which caused me much annoyance but led me to unlooked for pleasure.

It has, I think, been said before that I had been for some time in better circumstances, had a larger house, more servants and so on. Among the servants whom I found on my return, was a parlour maid, a lovely girl with a superb pink and white complexion, and a skin which looked like ivory. She had darkish chestnut hair, soft hazel eyes, and a lovely set of teeth, was well grown, plump, and altogether a most desirable creature, and who looked a lady. Her name was Lucy. It passed through my mind that she would be an exquisite sweetheart, but I resisted incipient desire, avoiding by prudence and custom all intrigues with my own house-hold. Suddenly this girl was dismissed, and I was re-quested to dismiss my man, who had lived with us before I had left England, indeed had been in my service nearly two years. He was the best man I ever had, and was moreover a fine, handsome fellow, five feet ten high, and pleasant to look upon. He had been caught in loving familiarities with Lucy, who it was said also was with child by him; the poor girl had let this out to the cook or some one else, and the cook split upon her. James was impudent and denied it all, but I think the case was proved. It would not have done to have passed over open fornication. Had I done so, the habit would have spread throughout the household; so I reluctantly gave him notice. The poor girl went off very quietly in tears. I never felt so sorry for a woman, especially as whilst denying that she had let him have her, she said that he had promised her marriage, which James, when I told him, said was a lie. But this statement of hers confirmed me in the belief that he had tailed her. Lucy was however promised a character, and that nothing should be said about her faux pas, unless a question leading to it were asked. It was an unusual piece of charity of my old woman.

So nice a looking girl was of course sought after, and in two or three days ladies applied for her character, but none would take her. James had not gone because I could not get suited with another man. I spoke to him again, and accused him of cruelty and wickedness in promising marriage, but he still denied it altogether. “But the cook asserts she has seen you on the sofa in the dining room more than once.” “She's a liar,” said James, “but I've several times had her, and on that sofa too, and because I'd have no more of her, she's got up this tale.” — James got then insolent.

Now in my dining-room was a sofa, tho not an usual piece of furniture in a dining-room; but I liked to lay there myself and read after dinner at times, so as to avoid the drawing-room and all that was usually in it. The footman and parlour maid laid the dinner things, waited at table, and cleared away, and so no other servant had any right in that room usually at those times, they had a nice chance and had availed themselves of it, I quite believed.

I wished the cook at the Devil for causing me to lose two nice servants, and immediately told my wife what I had heard about her.

She turned up into a high state of moral indignation, and had the cook up, and told her what James had said, I was asked to be present. Cook was fattish but had a pleasant face, was under forty — and I have fucked many a less tempting bit of flesh. — Never did a woman turn so red as she did. She was almost speechless, then almost choked, denied it, and dared the villain to say so to her face. I called him up. My wife said she could not have such investigations before her — yet she stayed. James repeated that he had been “very familiar” with her. — Cook howled, shed tears, and said he lied. He retorted that the kitchen maid knew it. The kitchen maid was called up and questioned in a most delicate way. — She first denied knowing anything about it, but catechised by James, said that the cook and he had certainly been to the top of the house to-gether at times when missus was out. She didn't know why, it wasn't her business to spy her fellow servants, and so on. And then said that the housemaid who slept with Lucy knew more than she did about Lucy and James. A regular shindy ensued among the servants, and it ended in the whole lot being discharged, excepting the lady's maid. Altho by no means sure that the footman had not accused the cook out of spite, I felt sure that he had got into Lucy under promise of marriage.

At the end of a week the poor girl came crying to us, and imploring that nothing should be said to prevent her getting a place. Then I found out her lodgings and went really and truly to comfort her. It was about ten o'clock in the morning. “Three pair front,” said the landlady, not looking very pleasantly at me, and directly I had gone, as I heard afterwards, said “I ain't a going to have any of them games here. You take your-self off if swells like him visit yer.” — So as I really was much interested in the girl, and had determined to help her, I arranged for her to meet me at Charing Cross that afternoon. I declare I had no intention of trying to have her, tho I had felt a desire for her. But I meant to try to get her married to my man. That was my vague notion.

She was a little late, and as I could not well talk with her in the street, I took her to the Cafe de P**v**e and ordered a little dinner in a private room. — She had had very bad food since she had left my house, and this nice dinner delighted her. Like all women of her class she refused it at first, was nervous, said she could not eat before gentlefolks, and was most uncomfortable, but it gradually wore off as the food warmed and the wine cheered her. Her lovely eyes began to sparkle and her tears dried up. Then cheered myself, a sudden throb of desire went through me. She has had it up her cunt, has been spent in, has clasped a man in her arms, has felt his prick. — I wonder if she has a pretty cunt, much hair on it, and a group of cognate thoughts came on and my prick was standing, and was within a couple of yards of that cunt. Did my lust communicate itself to her by subtle magnetic influence? how can that be known? But I became silent for the moment, and so did she, staring intently and, as I thought after-wards, voluptuously at me.