Note 220 — ALAEDDIN; OR, THE WONDERFUL LAMP. (continued 3)
Richard Francis Burton translation
Evidently la force de l’imagination, of which a curious illustration was given in Paris during the debauched days of the Second Empire. Before a highly “fashionable” assembly of men appeared a youth in fleshings who sat down upon a stool, bared his pudenda and closed his eyes when, by “force of fancy,” erection and emission took place. But presently it was suspected and proved that the stool was hollow and admitted from below a hand whose titillating fingers explained the phenomenon.