I withdrew it from among its companions and idly thumbed the pages. They were uncut, but the chapter titles in the index fed my interest* I took the volume out to my hammock and- with a penknife cut the pages. The title of this book was "Madamoiselle de. Mauphin." How it happened to be in the library of my puritanical and religious minded uncle I will never know but it was certainly due to some accident and beyond doubt he never so much as suspected the presence of this masterpiece of lurid literature in his m staid and respectable collection of books.

I had not, up to this time, ever gotten my hands on any book of a really pornographic nature. The family doctor book, with its chapters on procreation, childbirth, and kindred subjects was a far throw from the book I at that mo-merit had before my eyt amp;s. Many times since I have tried to obtain a copy in English, but such as I have found invariably turned out to be re-

vised or "expurgated" editions. In the certainty it would never have been missed, I could have appropriated this copy if I had had my wits about me at the time. The story revolves around a young French girl who, thrown upon her own resources adopts a masculine disguise as a.protection against the vicissitudes of life to which an unprotected girl would be exposed. She is involved in many erotic situations, which culminate in another young girl falling in love with her, unaware of her true sex. This girl, frantic at her apparent failure to win du Maupin's love enters her room at night and in a last despairing effort to seduce the object of her infatuation, exposes her nude body. This, and many other emotional episodes, in the last of Which the two females come to a satisfactory understanding, surrendering themselves to each other in a sexual embrace of mysterious nature, were so vivid in their rendition that I was soon in a state of erotic frenzy.