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MY SECRET LIFE as circumstances would let us be. We poked and poked, whenever we got a chance; we divided our money, if I had none, she spent her wages; when I had it, I paid for her boots and clothes—a present in the usually sense of the term I never gave her; our sexual pleasures were of the simplest, the old fashioned way was what we followed, and altogether it was a natural, virtuous, wholesome, connection, but the world will not agree with me on that point.

One thing strikes me as remarkable now: the audacity with which I went to a baudy house; all the rest seems to have began, and followed as naturally as possible. What a lovely recollection it is! nothing in my career since is so lovely as our life then was; scarce a trace of what may be called lasciviousness was in it, had the priest blest it by the bands of matrimony, it would have been called the chaste pleasure of love and affection—as the priest had nothing to do with it, it will be called I suppose beastly immorality. I have often wondered if her husband found out that she was not a virgin, and if not whether it was owing to some skill of hers, or to his ignorance; I heard afterwards that they lived happily. —125—