Page:The Sexual Question, 1908.djvu/14

 X "I must thank you for the deep and unalterable impression which your book has produced on me. I am a young girl of 21 years, and you know how difficult it is for us to see clearly into those natural things which so closely concern us. I cannot, therefore, thank you too much for the calm enlightenment which has been produced in me, and for the just and humane words which you devote to the education of our sex. I hope one day to have the good fortune to apply to my children the ideas on education with which you have inspired me.

"You ask me for the impression which your book has made on me. It is true that I am still very young, but I have read much. My mother has brought me up very freely, so that I can count myself among the young girls who are free from prejudice. In spite of this, a sort of internal anxiety or false shame has hindered me from shaking of all the things of which you treat. All that I knew I had read in books or derived by instinct. Although I knew very well that my mother would always answer my questions I never asked any.

"I declare that latterly my mind had been in a state of veritable chaos. I was obsessed and tormented by a fear of everything of which I was ignorant and some day ought to learn. This is why I was anxious to read your book which a friend showed me. I will now express myself more clearly.

"The first chapters were difficult for me, not because I could not understand them, but owing to the strange and novel experience which the truth made in me when plainly and scientifically expounded. Wishing to read everything I applied myself to the book laboriously. My first impression was that of disgust for all human beings and mistrust of everything. But I was soon glad to find that I was a very normal young girl, so that this impression soon passed away. I was no longer excited over conversations which I heard, but took a real interest in them, and I was happy to have become acquainted with some one who understood us young girls.

"I am, therefore, a young girl whose sensations are neither cold nor perverse, and I am always rejoiced, in reading your book, to see with what truth you describe our sexual impressions. Those who maintain that we feel in this way the same as men make me smile. In your book ("Hygiene of Marriage," p. 479) you say that the idea of marriage awakens in a normal young girl a kind of anguish and disgust, and that this feeling disappears as soon as she has found some one whom she loves. This