Name: Anonymous 2019-09-26 4:37
Masturbators are troubled by miserable fancies that their letters are opened and read by unknown parties before coming to hand; that every one who meets them sees in their countenances the effects of their habits, or is aware in some mysterious way of their ill-practices.
Others say that the blood rushes to their face whenever a casual eye meets them in the street, frequently accompanied by perspiration, and that the eyes are involuntarily cast down, as though they had been suddenly detected in some guilty act; that their conversation becomes disconnected, and their observation desultory; that they loose all their relish for pursuits which formerly interested them to the highest degree; that they envy every one they see; fancy there is nothing left for them in the world, either of utility or pleasure; that they have become aimless and purposeless, and that all they can do is to drag on a miserable existence till the tomb closes over them.
The sufferer from this vice becomes listless, inattentive, indifferent. There is an inability to concentrate the mind, or apply it with any degree of vigor; want of interest in friends; loss of self-control; failure of memory, and difficulty of conducting conversation. The reasoning is disconnected, and oftentimes the mental powers entirely fail; the victim becomes diffident, bashful, and ashamed, and seldom looks people in the face. His love of books is lost, history becomes a blank, the glowing pages of romance charm no more, the poet’s spell hath lost its power, music’s witchery is dead, the beauties of art are passed unheeded by, the loveliest landscape is but an arid desert, and nature’s most sublime endeavors fail to arouse the soul of him who has long been contaminated by this loathsome vice of masturbation.