By

WHEN EVEN now I awaken in the still darkness of the night with a sudden start that appears to possess no apparent physical origin, when I am driven mad with passion and feel my hands stealing down to caress my ramrod-hard pego, then I know that the sweet dreams fast vanishing, alas, into the shelter of oblivion must have contained at least a fragment of fantasy about my darling Lucy, or one of the other young ladies who helped make my formative years so pleasurable during those dear days almost beyond recall.

I refer, my friendly reader, to the times spent as a schoolboy at the Nottsgrove Academy for Young Gentlemen situated near the pleasant hamlet of Arkley, deep in the wilds of rural Hertfordshire. Perhaps my first essay upon the delights of studying at that most progressive academy, penned for a previous issue of our esteemed journal, is not unknown to you. (See The Pearl, Volume 3.) Though the years have passed by, the pictures of Lucy will never vanish from my brain: her dear face next to mine, close enough for me to see her lips parting with desire; her ripe body touching mine, setting me on fire with carnal yearnings, clasping me with pleading urgency.

Ah, sweet recollections of lying naked on crushed and rumpled sheets, watching the early morning sunlight caress my sated, sleeping lover, listening to the muted sounds beyond the boudoir as the countryside wakes to another morn. Alas, often when old men meet together, many are full of woes. They hanker still for the joys of youth, remembering how in their spring years they would besport themselves with wine, women and song, all hours of the day and night. Now, in the autumn of their time upon this planet, they think it is a great deprivation that those times are way behind them.