My
principal recollection now is of the filthy mystery of foul talk,
that I neither cared for nor understood. What I really needed,
like all the other boys, was a little timely help over the
sexual problems, but this we none of us got, and each had to work
out his own principle of conduct for himself. It was a long,
difficult, and wasteful process, and I cannot but believe that
many of us failed in the endeavor. We had come unprepared with
any advice. The principle upon which we were apparently trained
was the repression of every instinct. My mother was ignorant from
innocence, my father from indifference, and so between them I was
sent out helpless. A mother incurs great responsibility in
sending her child away unprepared. A parent should not seek to
shift his responsibility upon the schoolmaster. Love alone should
be the fount from which revelations should flow; the master, from
the very nature of his position, cannot reveal.
"An imminent breakdown in health--due, it would now appear, to
quite obvious causes--relieved me from the purgatory of the
college dormitory, and I was removed to one of the private
houses.
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