Frank Harris

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Smith was in doubt how to act and confided in me. He had found Professor Kellogg, in whose house he lived, trying to kiss the pretty help, Rose entirely against her will: Smith was emphatic on this point, the girl was struggling angrily to free herself, when by chance he interrupted them.
I relieved Smith's solemn gravity a little by roaring with laughter: the idea of an old Professor and clergyman trying to win a young girl by force filled me with amusement: "What a fool the man must be!" was my English judgment; Smith took the American high moral tone at first. ”

“ Yet though I noted all Kathleen's feline witchery, I fell prone for Molly. She seemed to me both intelligent and witty: she had read widely too and knew both French and German; she was as far above all the American girls I had met in knowledge of books and art as she was inferior to the best of them in bodily beauty. For the first time my mind was excited and interested and I thought I was in love and one late afternoon or early evening on Castle Hill I told her I loved her and we became engaged. ”

“ Yet to me it is absolutely untrue in regard to the male in boyhood and early youth, say from thirteen to twenty: the sex-urge, the lust of the flesh was so overwhelming in me that I was conscious only of desire. When the rattlesnake's poison-bag is full, he strikes at everything that moves, even the blades of grass; the poor brute is blinded and in pain with the overplus. ”

“ That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
"Why you've learned it by heart!", cried the old man in wonder; "learned", I repeated, "I know half the book by heart: if you had stayed away another half hour, I'd have known it all and I went on reciting for the next ten minutes.
"I never heard of such a thing in my life", he cried: "fancy a cowboy who learns Swinburne by merely reading him. It's astounding! Where are you going!" "To Lawrence," I replied. "We're almost there," he added and then, "I wish you would let me give you the book. ”

“ There was something childish, direct, innocent even about her frankness that fascinated me and her good looks made sunshine in the darkening room.
"I like you, Sophy", I said, "but anyone would have done as much for your mother as I did. She was ill!"
"Hoo!" she snorted indignantly, "most white folk would have let her die right there on the stairs: I know them: they'd have been angry with her for groaning: I hate 'em!" and her great eyes glowered. She came over to me in a flash:
"If you'd been American, I couldn't never have come to you, never! ”

“ I shall win the ears of men first and their senses, and later their minds and hearts and finally their souls; for I shall show them all the beautiful things I have discovered in Life's pilgrimage, all the sweet and lovable things too and so encourage and cheer them and those aftercomers, my peers, whose sounding footsteps already I seem to hear, and I shall say as little as may be of defeats and downfalls and disgraces save by way of warning; for it is courage men need most in life, courage and lovingkindness. ”

“ Don't we try all sorts of tricks? Aren't we haughty and withdrawn at one moment and affectionate, tender, loving at another? Don't we conceal the hook with every sort of bait only to watch the fish sniff at it and turn away. Ah, if you knew—I feel a traitor to my sex even in telling you—if you guessed how we angle for you and how clever we are, how full of wiles! There's an expression I once heard my husband use which describes us women exactly or nine out of ten of us. ”

“ At once Sophy followed my movements, lifting her sex up to me as I pushed in and depressing it to hold me as I withdrew. Even when I quickened, she kept time and so gave me the most intense pleasure, thrill on thrill, and as I came and my seed spirted into her, the muscle inside her vagina gripped my sex, heightening the sensation to an acute pang; she even kissed me more passionately than any other girl, licking the inside of my lips with her hot tongue. ”

“ Señor Arriga flashed a sharp suspicious glance at me, but apparently reassured by my frankness, went on:
"In Mexico we never talk of members of our family," he warned: "The Señorita is pretty, of course, but very young; she has not the charm of experience, the caress of—I know so little American, I find it difficult to explain."
But I was satisfied. "He doesn't love her", I said to myself; "loves no one except himself." ”

“ Keogh's cabin, once more joyful and grateful as I had been with E . . . . My fingers were like eyes gratifying my curiosity, and the curiosity was insatiable. Jessie's thighs were smooth and firm and round: I took delight in recalling the touch of them, and her bottom was firm like warm marble. I wanted to see her naked and study her beauties one after the other. Her sex too was wonderful, fuller even than Lucille's and her eyes were finer. Oh, Life was a thousand times better than school. I thrilled with joy and passionate wild hopes—perhaps Jessie would let me, perhaps—I was breathless. ”

“ Since I came to Kansas from the State of New York twenty-five years ago, I have been asked a score of times to examine one candidate or another. I always refused: I did not wish to punish Western candidates by putting them against our Eastern standards. But here at long last appears a candidate who has won honor in the University to whom, therefore, a stiff examination in open court can only be a vindication, and accordingly I examined Mr. Harris as if he had been in the State of New York; for surely Kansas too has come of age and its inhabitants cannot wish to be humored as inferiors. ”

“ Mad as you make me with your love-thrusts, for at one moment I am hot and dry with desire, the next wet with passion, bathed in love, I could live with you all my life without having you, if you wished it, or if it would do you good. ”

“ If I had only known, I would have cut out all the Lizzies that infested my life and reserved myself for the love that was soon to oust the mere sex-urge.
Next door to us lived a doctor's widow with two daughters, the eldest a medium-sized girl with large head and good grey eyes, hardly to be called pretty though all girls were pretty enough to excite me for the next ten years or more. This eldest girl was called Molly—a pet name for Maria. Her sister Kathleen was far more attractive physically: she was rather tall and slight, with a lithe grace of figure that was intensely provocative. ”

“ Moreover, Lily was quite as interesting a lover and Lily too had begun to pall on me. The truth is, the fever of desire in youth is a passing malady that intimacy quickly cures. Besides, I was already in pursuit of a girl in Philadelphia who kept me a longtime at arm's length, and when she yielded I found her figure commonplace and her sex so large and loose that she deserves no place in this chronicle. ”

“ I liked girls fully formed and they all thought, I suppose, that I was too young and too small: if they had only known!
One more incident belongs in this thirteenth year, and is worthy perhaps of record. Freed of the bullying and senseless cruelty of the older boys who for the most part, still siding with Jones, left me severely alone, the restraints of school life began to irk me, "If I were free", I said to myself, "I'd go after E . . . or some other girl and have a great time; as it is, I can do nothing, hope for nothing." Life was stale, flat and unprofitable to me. ”

“ From about this time on, the individualities of people began to impress me definitely. Vernon suddenly got an appointment in a bank at Armagh and I went to live with him there, in lodgings. The lodging-house keeper I disliked: she was always trying to make me keep hours and rules, and I was as wild as a homeless dog, but Armagh was a wonder city to me. Vernon made me a day-boy at the Royal School: it was my first big school; I learned all the lessons very easily and most of the boys and all the masters were kind to me. ”

“ I want to reach the heights and hug the illusion, cramming one hot week with bliss and then death for a fortnight. What rags we women are! Come, dear, I will be your sheath and you shall be the sword and drive right into me— But I'll help you", she cried suddenly: "Was it that girl told you, you owed money for food? ”

“ In a short time I had exhausted the Boss and Reece; but Dell and Bob each in his own way was richly equipped, and while Dell introduced me to literature and economics, Bob taught me some of the mysteries of cow-punching and the peculiar morals of Texan cattle. Every little herd of those half-wild animals had its own leader, it appeared and followed him fanatically. When we brought together a few different bunches in our corral, there was confusion worse confounded till after much hooking and some fighting a new leader would be chosen whom all would obey. ”

“ This life holds nothing worth having but love; let us make love deathless, you and I, going together to death. What do we lose? Nothing! This world is an empty shell! Come with me, love, and we'll meet Death together! ”

“ Then I remember an interlude at Belfast where Vernon and I lodged with an old Methodist who used to force me to go to church with him and drew on a little black skullcap during the Service, which filled me with shame and made me hate him. There is a period in life when every thing peculiar or individual, excites dislike and is in itself an offense. ”

“ I had had my first talk with a prostitute and in her room! The idea that a girl could want a baby was altogether new to me: her temptations very different from a boy's, very!
For the greater part of my first year in Chicago I had no taste of love: I was often tempted by this chambermaid or that; but I knew I should lose prestige if I yielded and I simply put it all out of my head resolvedly as I had abjured drink. But towards the beginning of the summer temptation came to me in a new guise. A Spanish family, named Vidal, stopped at the Fremont House. ”

“ I make no pretension to scholarship of any sort and indeed learning of any kind leaves me indifferent unless it leads to a fuller understanding of beauty or that widening of the spirit by sympathy that is another name for wisdom. But what I wish to emphasize here is that in the first year with Smith I learned by heart dozens of choruses from the Greek dramatists and the whole of the "Apologia" and "Crito" of Plato, having guessed then and still believe that the "Crito" is a model short story, more important than any of even Plato's speculations. Plato and Sophocles! ”

“ I could not get work though I tried everything: I was met everywhere with the excuse: "hard times: hard times!" At length I took a place as waiter in the Eldridge House, the only job I could find that left most of the forenoon free for the University. Smith disliked this new departure of mine and told me he would soon find me a better post, and Mrs. Gregory was disgusted and resentful—partly out of snobbishness, I think. From this time on I felt her against me and gradually she undermined my influence with Kate: I soon knew I had fallen in public esteem too, but not for long. ”

“ If I have had any success in life or done any good work, it is due in great part to that resolution.
I could not keep my thoughts from Jessie; if I tried to put her out of my head, I'd either get a little note from her, or Ponsonby would come begging me to leave him the cabin the whole day: at length in despair I begged her for her address in New York, for I feared to lose her forever in that maelstrom. I added that I would always be in my cabin and alone from one to half past if she could ever come. ”

“ I turned the gas on full: never was there a more seductive figure. Her skin was darkish, it is true; but not darker than that of an ordinary Italian or Spanish girl, and her form had a curious attraction for me: her breasts, small and firm as elastic, stood out provocatively; her hips, however, were narrower than even Lily's though the cheeks of her bottom were full; her legs too were well-rounded, not a trace of the sticks of the negro; her feet even were slender and high-arched.
"You are the loveliest girl I've ever seen!" I cried as I helped to put in the syringe and wash her sex. ”

“ In ten minutes' chat the hobo had upset all my preconceived ideas and given me a host of new and interesting thoughts. He was a man of some reading if not of education and the violence of his language attracted me almost as much as the novelty of his point of view.
All rich men were thieves, all workmen, sheep and fools, was his creed. The workmen did the work, created the wealth, and the employers robbed them of nine-tenths of the product of their labor and so got rich. ”

“ Fancy a cowboy knowing books of Vergil and poems of Swinburne by heart; it's absurd: you must give your brains a chance and study."
"I've too little money" I said, beginning to regret my loan to my brother.
"I told you I am a Socialist," Smith retorted smiling: "I have three or four thousand dollars in the Bank, take half of it and come to study" and his luminous eyes held me: then it was true, after all; my heart swelled, jubilant, there were noble souls in this world who took little thought of money and lived for better things than gold. ”

“ Soon she began to move against my sex, and to kiss me, and then she bit my lips just as my sex slipped into hers again; she left it in for a long moment and then as her lips grew hot: "it's so big", she said, "but you're a dear". The moment after she cried: "We must get up, boy! if they caught us, I'd die of shame". When I tried to divert her attention by kissing her breasts, she pouted, "That hurts too. Please, boy, stop and don't look", she added as she tried to rise, covering her sex the while with her hand, and pulling a frowning face. ”

“ She had learned life from the streets, from the animal side first; but it was astonishing how quickly she grew in understanding: love is the only magical teacher! In a fortnight her speech was better than Lily's; in a month she talked as well as any of the American girls I had had; her desire of knowledge and her sponge-like ease of acquirement were always surprising me. She had a lovelier figure than even Rose and ten times the seduction even of Lily: she never hesitated to take my sex in her hand and caress it ”

“ Naturally I took out "The Merchant of Venice" from the school library and in one day knew it by heart. I could learn good poetry by a single careful reading: bad poetry or prose was much harder.
Nothing in the play appealed to me except Shylock and the first time I heard Fawcett of the Sixth recite the part, I couldn't help grinning: he repeated the most passionate speeches like a lesson in a singsong, monotonous voice. For days I went about spouting Shylock's defiance and one day, as luck would have it, Stackpole heard me. ”

“ When I told him I was going to hear Taine lecture on the Philosophy of Art and the Ideal in Art, he laughed at me; but I believe I got more from Taine than he got from his more exact knowledge of French. When I came to know Taine and was able to call on him and talk to him, Bancroft too wanted to know him. I brought them together; but clearly Taine was not impressed, for Ned out of false shame hardly opened his mouth. But I learned a good deal from Taine and one illustration of his abides with me as giving a true and vivid conception of art and its ideal. ”

“ At once I stopped and put away my sex and let her clothes drop. "You're such a sweet, Jess", I said, "who could deny you anything; in New York then, but now one long kiss."
She gave me her mouth at once and her lips were hot. I learned that morning that when a girl's lips grow hot, her sex is hot first and she is ready to give herself and ripe for the embrace. ”

“ Without this blessed conviction how could I ever have undergone the labor or endured the shame or faced the loneliness of the Garden, or carried the cross of my own Crucifixion; for every artist's life begins in joy and hope and ends in the shrouding shadows of doubt and defeat and the chill of everlasting night. ”

“ I told him all my ambitions and he tried to persuade me to take one hundred pounds a year from him to continue my studies. I told him I couldn't, though I was just as grateful. "I'll get work as soon as I am strong", I said; but his unselfish affection shook my very soul and when he told me that my sister, too, had agreed he should make me the allowance, I could only shake my head and thank him. That evening I went to bed early and he came and sat with me: he said that the doctor advised that I should take a long rest. ”

“ She was a privileged character in the town: she rode on the street-cars and railroads too without paying; those who challenged her were all "pore white trash", she said, and some man was always eager to pay for her: she never hesitated to go up to any man and ask him for a dollar or even five dollars—and invariably got what she wanted: her beauty was as compelling to men as her scornful aloofness. I had often heard of her as "that d—d pretty nigger girl!" but I could see no trace of any negro characteristic in her pure loveliness. ”