began, «I felt more curiosity than desire:
I had so often tried to picture it all to myself. When I saw your sex I was astonished, for it looked very big to me and I wondered whether you could really get it into my sex, which I knew was just big enough for my finger to go in. Still I did want to feel your sex pushing into me, and your kisses and the touch of your hand on my sex made me even more eager. When you slipped the head of your sex into mine, it hurt dreadfully; it was almost like a knife cutting into me, but the pain for some reason seemed to excite me and I pushed forward so as to get you further in me; I think that's what broke my maidenhead. At first I was disappointed because I felt no thrill, only the pain; but, when my sex became all wet and open and yours could slip in and out easily, I began to feel real pleasure. I liked the slow movement best; it excited me to feel the head of your sex just touching the lips of mine and, when you pushed in slowly all the way, it gave me a gasp of breathless delight: when you drew your sex out, I wanted to hold it in me. And the longer you kept on, the more pleasure you gave me. For hours afterwards, my sex was sensitive; if I rubbed it ever so gently, it would begin to itch and burn. «But that night in the hotel at Kansas City I really wanted you and the pleasure you gave me then was much keener than the first time. You kissed and caressed me for a few minutes and I soon felt my love-dew coming and the button of my sex began to throb. As you thrust your shaft in and out of me, I felt a strange sort of pleasure: every little nerve on the inside of my thighs and belly seemed to thrill and quiver; it was almost a feeling of pain. At first the sensation was not so intense, but, when you stopped and made me wash, I was shaken by quick, short spasms in my thighs, and my sex was burning and throbbing; I wanted you more than ever. «When you began the slow movement again, I felt the same sensations in my thighs and belly, only more keenly, and, as you kept on, the pleasure became so intense that I could scarcely bear it.
Suddenly you rubbed your sex against mine and my button began to throb; I could almost feel it move. Then you began to move your sex quickly in and out of me; in a moment I was breathless with emotion and I felt so faint and exhausted that I suppose I fell asleep for a few minutes, for I knew nothing more till I felt the cold water trickling down my face. When you began again, you made me cry, perhaps because I was all dissolved in feeling and too, too happy. Ah, love is divine: isn't it?» Kate was really of the highest woman-type, mother and mistress in one. She used to come down and spend the night with me oftener than ever and on one of these occasions she found a new word for her passion. She declared she felt her womb move in yearning for me when I talked my best or recited poetry to her in what I had christened her holy week. Kate it was who taught me first that women could be even more moved and excited by words than by deeds.
Once, I remember, when I had talked sentimentally, she embraced me of her own accord and we had each other with wet eyes. Another effect of Smith's absence was important, for it threw me a good deal with Miss Stephens. I soon found that she had inherited the best of her father's brains and much of his strength of character. If she had married Smith, she might have done something noteworthy; as it was, she was very attractive and well-read as a girl and would have made Smith, I am sure, a most excellent wife. Once and once only I tried to hint to her that her sweetness to Smith might do him harm physically; but the suspicion of reproof made her angry and she evidently couldn't or wouldn't understand what I meant without a physical explanation, which she would certainly have resented. I had to leave her to what she would have called her daimon, for she was as prettily pedantic as Tennyson's Princess, or any other mid-Victorian heroine. Her brother, Ned, too, I came to know pretty well. He was a tall, handsome youth with fine grey eyes; a good athlete, but of commonplace mind. The father was the most Interesting of the whole family, were it only for his prodigious conceit. He was of noble appearance: a large, handsome head with silver grey hairs setting off a portly figure well above middle height. In spite of his assumption of superiority, I felt him hide-bound in thought, for he accepted all the familiar American conventions, believing, or rather knowing, that the American people, «the good old New England stock in particular, were the salt of the earth, the best breed to be seen anywhere.»
It showed his brains that he tried to find a reason for this belief. «English oak is good,» he remarked one day sententiously, «but American hickory is tougher still. Reasonable, too, this belief of mine,» he added, «for the last glacial period skinned all the good soil off of New England and made it bitterly hard to get a living; and the English who came out for conscience sake were the pick of the Old Country; and they were forced for generations to scratch a living out of the poorest kind of soil with the worst climate in the world, and hostile Indians all round to sharpen their combativeness and weed out the weaklings and wastrels.» There was a certain amount of truth In his contention, but this was the nearest to an original thought I ever heard him express; and his intense patriotic fervor moved me to doubt his intelligence. I was delighted to find that Smith rated him just as I did: «A first rate lawyer, I believe,» was his judgment;
«a sensible, kindly man.» «A little above middle height,» I interpreted; and Smith added smiling, «And considerably above average weight: he would never have done anything notable in literature or thought.» As the year wore on, Smith's letters called for me more and more insistently and at length I went to join him in Philadelphia.
Frank Harris
My Life and Loves, v1 Chapter XIII. New Experiences: Emerson, Walt Whitman, Bret Harte SMITH MET ME at the station. He was thinner than ever and the wretched little cough shook him very often in spite of some lozenges that the doctor had given him to suck. I began to be alarmed about him, and I soon came to the belief that the damp climate of the Quaker City was worse for him than the thin, dry Kansas air.
But he believed in his doctors! He boarded with a pleasant Puritan family in whose house he had also got me a room, and at once we resumed the old life. But now I kept constant watch on him and insisted on rigorous self- restraint, tying up his unruly organ every night carefully with thread, which was still more efficient (and painful) than the whipcord. But now he didn't improve quickly: it was a month before I could find any of the old vigor in him; but soon afterwards the cough diminished and he began to be his bright self again. One of our first evenings I described to him the Bradlaugh lecture in much the same terms I have used in this narrative. Smith asked: «Why don't you write it? You ought to: the Press would take it.
You've given me an extraordinary, life-like portrait of a great man, blind, so to speak, in one eye, a sort of Cyclops. If he had been a Communist, how much greater he'd have been.» I ventured to disagree and we were soon at it hammer and tongs. I wanted to see both principles realized in life, individualism and socialism, the centrifugal as well as the centripetal force, and was convinced that the problem was how to bring these opposites to a balance which would ensure an approximation of justice and make for the happiness of all.
Smith, on the other hand, argued at first as an out-and-out Communist and follower of Marx, but he was too fair minded to shut his eyes for long to the obvious. Soon he began congratulating me on my insight, declaring I had written a new chapter in economics. His conversion made me feel that I was at long last his equal as a thinker. In any field where his scholarship didn't give him too great an advantage, I was no longer a pupil but an equal, and his quick recognition of the fact increased, I believe, our mutual affection.
Though infinitely better read, he put me forward in every company with the rarest generosity, asserting that I had discovered new laws in sociology. For months we lived very happily together, but his Hegelianism defied all my attacks: it corresponded too intimately with the profound idealism of his own character. As soon as I had written out the Bradlaugh story, Smith took me down to the Press office and introduced me to the chief editor, a Captain Forney: indeed, the paper then was usually called «Forney's Press,» though already some spoke of it as the Philadelphia Press. Forney liked my portrait of Bradlaugh and engaged me as a reporter on the staff and occasional descriptive writer at fifty dollars a week, which enabled me to save all the money coming to me from Lawrence. One day Smith talked to me of Emerson and confessed he had got an introduction to him and had sent it on to the philosopher with a request for an interview. He had wished me to accompany him to Concord. I consented, but without any enthusiasm: Emerson was then an unknown name to me.
Smith read me some of his poetry and praised it highly, though I could get little or nothing out of it. When young men now show me a similar indifference, my own experience makes it easy for me to excuse them.
They know not what they do! is the explanation and excuse for all of us. One bright fall day Smith and I went over to Concord and next day visited Emerson. He received us in the most pleasant, courteous way, made us sit, and composed himself to listen. Smith went off at score, telling him how greatly he had influenced his life and helped him with brave encouragement. The old man smiled benignantly and nodded his head, ejaculating from time to time, «Yes, yes!» Gradually Smith warmed to his work and wanted to know why Emerson had never expressed his views on sociology or on the relations between capital and labor. Once or twice the old gentleman cupped his ear with his hand, but all he said was, «Yes, yes!» or «I think so,» with the same benevolent smile. I guessed at once that he was deaf, but Smith had no inkling of the fact, for he went on probing, probing, while
