Practical Aspects of Chastity

This week I was going to feature some words on the joys of petting, but I have had a sudden change of heart. My selection comes from a chapter entitled “Dangers of Petting” found in a book called Secrets of Love and Marriage. 1939: Practical Aspects of Chastity [T]here is another matter to consider, since we […]

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An Important Difference

Boys and girls. Girls and boys. Who would imagine that they were so incredibly different? Thanks to P. J. Bruckner’s pamphlet titled How to Give Sex Instructions, which was written as “a guide for parents, teachers, and others responsible for the training of young people,” we are finally able to have a better understanding of these […]

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The Stupefying Rot of Sexual Proclivities

Q Dear Miss Abigail: Please share some good out-of-date advice from Dr. Edwin W. Hirsch regarding the “power to love.” Thank you! Signed, Viloura A Dear Viloura: Aha! You’ve been fooled by deceiving book titles of years past, artfully constructed to disguise the true, sometimes embarrassing contents. Dr. Hirsch’s 1934 guide titled The Power to Love […]

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Directions for Sex

Q Dear Miss Abigail: Where can I find directions for sex? Eddie A Dear Eddie: Step one: Find and woo partner. Step two: Get hitched (you remember, only married people have sex). Step three: Get naked. Step four: Read something like C. B. Evans’s Man and Woman in Marriage ~ “a sound, comprehensive statement of normal […]

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Kissing Tips

Q Dear Miss Abigail: Do you have any tips on kissing? Signed, Mike A Dear Mike: But, of course! And although I’ve provided other tips in the past, I’d like to share this fun bit of kissing advice. It’s from a 1987 reprint of Hugh Morris’s informative How to Make Love: The Secret of Wooing and […]

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Lures Men Can’t Resist

“Her style is eminently readable, and she writes simply and sincerely, utterly without cheap sentimentality,” the flap copy says of Dorothy Dix, author of How to Win and Hold a Husband. This book includes such informative chapters as “What a Man Looks For in a Wife,” “It Pays to Be a Mystery,” and “The Cost of […]

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“Don’ts” Every Girl Should Know

Reading Cosmo (once a sick vacation pleasure of mine) and those Rules books inspired presentation of this excerpt. Here are some older “rules” ~ or in this case “don’ts” ~ from Dorothy Dix’s How to Win and Hold a Husband (1939). I chose the most entertaining from a somewhat longer list. Are you taking notes? You will be […]

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