It was back in 1957, when I was on campus taking my MS in Mechanical Engineering. I had some time between classes and decided to explore Butler Library from top to bottom.

I took an elevator to the very top of the building and got off into a well-paneled, comfortable-looking reading room. A librarian was sitting at a desk and welcomed me to the area. I felt as if I were in a private club's reading room. We appeared to be the only two people on that floor, and she was interested in why I had come up to her floor. Then she showed me around some of the collections she had there and suddenly asked if I would like to see something special.

She went to some cabinets and pulled out, as best I can remember, some rather large, old volumes, placed them on a large table and opened them. In one, I saw old Japanese prints by an artist who had prepared a manual for the pillow ladies of several centuries ago. Since the human anatomy has not changed in all that time, I judged the pictures very well worth reviewing because of their applicability to the present day.

When I went back to Columbia in 1965 for my doctorate, I tried to find that manuscript room again. But somehow, I never found it as everything about Butler looked different to me--the magic of 1957 had dissipated.

In 1972, when Alex Comfort released his 1972 bestseller, The Joy of Sex, my first thought on seeing his book was that I did not recall the title of the old volume I had seen, but could it not have been a Japanese version of The Joy of Sex?