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 A sequel to the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN AN- 
 DROGYNE and an account of some of the author's 
 experiences during his six years' career as in- 
 stinctive female-impersonator in New York's 
 Underworld; together with the life stories 
 of androgyne associates and an outline 
 of his subsequently acquired knowledge 
 of kindred phenomena of human 
 character and psychology. 
 
 BY 
 
 RALPH WERTHER— JENNIE JUNE 
 ("EARL LIND") 
 
 Author also of 
 The Riddle of the Underworld 
 
 edited, with introduction 
 
 BY 
 
 ALFRED W. HERZOG, Ph.B., A.M., M.D. 
 
 Member of the New York and the 
 New Jersey Bar 
 
 Editor of the Medico-Legal Journal 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL 
 
 1922 
 
Copyright, 1922 
 By ALFRED W. HERZOG 
 
 First edition, 1,000 copies. Sold only to physicians, lawyers, 
 clergymen, teachers, writers, psychologists, sociologists, and 
 legislators; by Medico-Legal Journal, 123 West 83d Street, New 
 York City. 
 
 This is copy Number and is sold 
 
 to 
 
Inscribed to Nature's Step-Children — 
 the sexually abnormal by birth — in the hope 
 that their lives may be rendered more toler- 
 able through the author's efforts to enlight- 
 en thinking men on these step-children's 
 psychology and life experience. 
 
 "But this is a people robbed and spoiled ; 
 they are all of them snared in holes, and 
 they are hid in prison houses; they are for 
 a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, 
 and none saith, Restore. 
 
 "Who among you will give ear to this? 
 Who will hearken and hear for the time to 
 come?"— Isaiah XLII, v. 22, 23. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction, by Dr. Alfred W. Herzog VII 
 
 Part One : The Third Sex 
 
 I. How This Book Came to Be Written 1 
 
 II. The Place of the Androgyne in the Male Sex- 
 
 Scale 7 
 
 III. Androgynes of Mythology and History 25 
 
 IV. Man Is a Passional, Rather Than a Rational, 
 
 Being 39 
 
 Part Two : How the Author Came to Be a Female- 
 Impersonator 
 
 I. Reveries Suggested by My Infancy 53 
 
 II. School Days 63- 
 
 III. An Androgyne's Youth 70 
 
 IV. I Grow into The Fairie Boy 82 
 
 V. The Boy Who Never Grew to Be a Man 89 
 
 Part Three: The Fairie Boy 
 
 I. Female-Impersonation 97 
 
 II. A Typical Female-Impersonation Spree 103 
 
 III. The Gambler 114 
 
 IV. A Stuyvesant Square Pick-up 130 
 
 V. Evenings at Paresis Hall 146 
 
 VI. Thoughts Suggested by the "Hermaphro- 
 
 ditoi" in General 164 
 
 Part Four: Frank — Eunice 
 
 I. Debut as Adult Female-Impersonator 170 
 
 II. The Pug Heaven 175 
 
 [iv] 
 
Contents. 
 
 Page 
 
 III. A University Friendship 178 
 
 IV. The Masked Ball 182 
 
 V. Frank — Eunice's Indiscretion 191 
 
 Part Five: Angelo — Phyllis 
 
 I. Angelo Angevine's Debut as Public Female- 
 
 Impersonator 198 
 
 II. Jailed for Wearing Petticoats 209 
 
 III. George Greenwood 214 
 
 Part Six: Newspaper Accounts of Murders of 
 Androgynes 
 
 I. Two Murder Mysteries Which, Strangely 
 
 Alike in Many Ways, Baffled All Efforts 
 to Solve 223 
 
 II. Z Mystery Baffles Inquiry at Every Angle .... 237 
 
 III. College Student's Death Is Unexplained 259 
 
 Part Seven : Medical Writers on Androgynism 
 
 I. What a New York Official Physician Has to 
 
 Say about Fairies 262 
 
 II. What One of America's Foremost Medical 
 
 Writers Has to Say about Fairies 266 
 
 Part Eight: Androgyne Verse 
 
 I. Emotion 271 
 
 II. Recollection 275 
 
 III. Memories 278 
 
 IV. French Doll Baby 280 
 
 Announcement of The Riddle of the Under- 
 world 283 
 
 Index 286 
 
 [v] 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Page 
 
 I. The Author — A Modern Living Replica of the Ancient 
 
 Greek" Statue, "Hermaphroditos" (Photo by Dr. A. 
 W. Herzog) Frontispiece 
 
 II. Ancient Greek Statue of an Androgyne, Called "Her- 
 
 maphroditos," Now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, 
 Italy 25 
 
 III. Alexander the Great — An Androgyne of the Mild Type 31 
 rV. Julius Cassar — An Androgyne of the Mild Type 31 
 
 V. Raphael — the Most Gifted Ultra-Androgyne the World 
 
 Has Known 33 
 
 VI. The "Fairie Boy" Ready to Set Out on Life's Journey 53 
 
 VII. My Garden of Gethsemane 78 
 
 VIII. Front View of Author at Thirty-three (Photo by Dr. 
 
 R. W. Shufeldt) 82 
 
 IX. Rear view of Author at Thirty-three (Photo by Dr. 
 
 R. W. Shufeldt) 89 
 
 X. Fourteenth Street Rialto, Stamping-Ground of the 
 
 Hermaphroditoi 105 
 
 XI. Stuyvesant Square, One of Jennie June's Stamping 
 
 Grounds 105 
 
 XII. Neighborhood Where Harvey Green Thought He 
 
 "Finished" Jennie June 140 
 
 XIII. The Author at Thirty-four (Amateur photo) 164 
 
 XrV. Bowery, in the Nineteenth Century America's Main 
 
 Red-Light Street, and Stamping-Ground of Frank- 
 Eunice, Angelo-Phyllis and Ralph Werther-Jennie 
 June 169 
 
 XV. Michelangelo's Adam 216 
 
 XVI. Whitestone Railroad Station ("Holy Ground") 
 
 271, 272, 273 
 
 XVII. "The Boy of the Piave" (America's gift to Italy in 
 
 1921) , 277 
 
 [vi] 
 
^xdxobnctian 
 ******* 
 
 When, in 1918, I agreed to publish the author's 
 Autobiography of an Androgyne, I did so because 
 persuaded that androgynism was not sufficiently un- 
 derstood and that therefore androgynes were unjustly 
 made to suffer. 
 
 Owing to the subject matter, or rather on account 
 of the way in which it was presented by the author, 
 I was obliged to restrict the sale of the book to phy- 
 sicians, lawyers, legislators, psychologists, and soci- 
 ologists. 
 
 The sale of the book, while not as large as it 
 ought to have been, showed however that the interest 
 of the professional man could be awakened, and he 
 be made to realize that the androgyne is no more to 
 be punished for his harmless sexual transgressions 
 than a congenital physical cripple for the latter's 
 unaesthetic physique. 
 
 Hardly had the Autobiography of an Androgyne 
 been published, when the author (who, it must 
 be understood, belongs to that despised class of 
 sexual cripples) started, £o use his own words, 
 "to peddle the script" of The Female-Impersonators 
 around to general book publishers, and continued to 
 do so for two years, until ten publishers had returned 
 it to him as unsuited for general circulation. 
 
 It must be understood that the author wrote The 
 Female-Impersonators for the general reader as 
 
 [vii] 
 
viii Introduction. 
 
 he felt that, although propaganda among scientists 
 was necessary, and would undoubtedly do some good, 
 really to help the suffering androgyne quickly, it was 
 necessary to reach the general public. 
 
 In this idea the author was not wrong. During 
 the last few years several suicides and murders of 
 androgynes have come to my personal notice, and 
 although a change of laws, which would do away with 
 the punishment of androgynes for their harmless 
 sexual lapses, would do a great deal to ameliorate the 
 conditions surrounding their lives (particularly pre- 
 vent much blackmail, from which they continually 
 suffer) yet the suicides of androgynes are almost 
 always due, not to fear of punishment by the law, but 
 to fear of exposure, which would cause the loss of their 
 positions and insure their being shunned by "decent" 
 society. 
 
 As to the frequent murders of androgynes, these 
 surely have not been committed by members of the 
 medical, legal or other learned professions, but by men 
 belonging to "the general public" — men more or less 
 "civilized," but altogether brutal. 
 
 It can not be doubted that a repeal of those laws 
 which prescribe punishment for sexual lapses of 
 these "pseudo-men" would do good, as it would not 
 only save them from prison terms, but also enable the 
 braver of them to prosecute and stop blackmailers, 
 who make a regular business of draining the resources 
 of androgynes. . 
 
 It is however impossible to achieve all that is 
 desirable until the general public has been thoroughly 
 impregnated with the fact that androgynism (as well 
 
Introduction. ix 
 
 as its correlative, gynandrism) is a psychopathic/, 
 sexualis, a mental twist, as harmless to society as any- 
 thing can be, because it is neither infectious nor con- 
 tagious, and can not be induced in anybody through 
 either association with androgynes or through quasi- 
 philosophical (that is, sophistical) teachings or cults. 
 
 It must be understood that a normal man can not 
 develop sexual feelings or desires for another man, 
 although it must be admitted that homosexuality is 
 occasionally practiced under conditions where access 
 to the opposite sex is impossible (or next to impos- 
 sible), as, for example, among soldiers on campaigns, 
 among sailors during long voyages on sailing vessels, 
 in boarding-schools for adolescents, etc. This species 
 of homosexuality is indulged in only from "necessity" 
 — so to say — and is not considered by those indulging 
 as much different from self-manustupration. It is 
 gladly abandoned as soon as access to the opposite sex 
 has become possible. 
 
 An ultra-androgyne however, although he has the 
 male primary physical attributes, never feels himself 
 to be a real male, but a female incarnated in a male 
 body (often with feminine earmarks), and would no 
 more be able to develop sexual feelings for a female 
 than a normal man for another male. 
 
 It is therefore a consummation devoutly to be 
 wished that a book setting forth the facts of andro- 
 gynism could be distributed among the general public. 
 The author tried to write a compendium for such 
 readers, and The Female-Impersonators is the re- 
 sult. 
 
 That he has failed in his attempt is to me not 
 only very apparent, but also quite natural. 
 
x Introduction. 
 
 To the author nothing that he has written about 
 the practices of androgynes seems what we call im- 
 moral or revolting. Because their own congenital 
 sexual tendencies appear to androgynes as the full- 
 fledged man's appear to the latter. 
 
 To the author of The Female-Impersonators it 
 is as natural to fall in love with another male (bearing 
 in mind however that the androgyne is only a "pseudo- 
 male") and write, what he calls poems, dedicated to 
 his "hero-boys" (who to me appear nothing but low 
 ruffians, blackmailers, and grafters) as it would be 
 for a normal man to fall in love with some good-look- 
 ing female, and write "poetry" about her, perhaps in 
 some of his later "poems" to bewail the fact that she 
 has proven herself "faithless, truthless, and makes a 
 sale of that which men call love, to him who bids the 
 highest." 
 
 It is therefore but natural that, since the author 
 sees human beings, as it were, distorted through his 
 own mental astigmatism, namely females as belonging 
 to his own sex and males to the opposite, his second 
 book, The Female-Impersonators, contains a great 
 deal which to the average reader would be "shocking", 
 and thus, instead of accomplishing the result which he 
 intended, would cause disgust, and make the treat- 
 ment of the androgyne even worse than at present. 
 
 After the author had submitted the manuscript of 
 his book to numerous publishers, trying in vain (as I 
 had predicted to him) to induce one of them to bring 
 out the book for general circulation, I agreed to pub- 
 lish it for restricted sale. 
 
 Not because I really felt that the book presents 
 a great deal of new material of scientific interest, but 
 
Introduction. xi 
 
 because, by describing the life experience of various 
 other androgynes, their viewpoints, their sufferings, 
 it continues the missionary work begun by the author 
 in his Autobiography of an Androgyne and thus 
 helps in keeping up the good work. For, to achieve 
 results, it is not only necessary to awaken interest in 
 a subject, but also to keep that interest alive. 
 
 Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi t sed saepe cadendo. 
 "A drop of water wears a hole in a stone, not by force, 
 but by frequently falling." 
 
 That the author is really doing missionary work 
 can not be doubted by me, for I know that he does 
 not derive any financial benefit from the publication 
 of his Autobiography of an Androgyne, nor do I 
 expect he will from the publication of the present 
 sequel. 
 
 Every cent which I have turned over to him as 
 royalties from the sale of his Autobiography he has 
 returned to me to be expended for advertisements in 
 various medical journals and, owing to the slight 
 interest in the subject which exists among physicians, 
 I am sorry to say that those advertisements have not 
 been financially remunerative. 
 
 As the author however feels that he has a mission 
 to fulfill; that he has been created by Providence one 
 of the despised androgynes for the purpose of taking 
 up their cause and ameliorating their state of almost 
 unparalleled sufferings, the missionary work will go 
 on, as it has begun. 
 
 As in the case of the first of the present trilogy, 
 The Female-Impersonators is published practically 
 as its author wrote it. 
 
xii Introduction. 
 
 For my impressions of the author's personality, 
 I refer to my Introduction in his Autobiography of 
 an Androgyne. 
 
 ALFRED W. HERZOG. 
 
 March, 1922 
 
Weft (Sfmrak-^mpersimators 
 
 fart One: 
 
 I. How This Book Came to Be Written. 
 
 My motive was humanitarian. My aim was to 
 save thousands of innocent stepchildren of Nature 
 from an aggregate of tens of thousands of years in 
 prison, and bring about a repeal of the laws under 
 which they are incarcerated and which are still in the 
 codes because civilized man has not yet entirely 
 emerged from the prejudice and superstition of the 
 Dark Ages. My second aim was to put a stop to the 
 continuous string of murders of these stepchildren, the 
 assassins laboring under the delusion that homosexu- 
 ality is due to deepest moral depravity, and feeling 
 that they are mandatories of society in ridding the 
 world of these "monsters." My third aim was to save 
 hundreds of these superlatively melancholy sexual in- 
 termediates from suicide as the result of bitter perse- 
 cution by those who pride themselves on the fact that 
 in their own case, sex has been thoroughly differ- 
 entiated. 
 
 [l] 
 
2 The Sexual The Worst Crippling. 
 
 The problem of the bisexual girl-boy or androgyne 
 has been presented for the learned professions in my 
 Autobiography of an Androgyne and The Riddle of 
 the Underworld. But to accomplish my three aims, 
 it is necessary that the general reader have instilled 
 into his mind that sexual intermediates are not to 
 blame for their cross-sex idiosyncrasies. Such knowl- 
 edge could not besmirch the soul of the general reader, 
 but only benefit him morally. 
 
 In the present work I have a message for the gen- 
 eral reader such as, in nearly every individual case, 
 has never yet reached him. My God-given mission 
 is to be one of the first to cry: "Child of English 
 culture, 1 reflect a moment, and ask yourself whether 
 you are at last, in this the most enlightened century 
 of man's existence, willing to grant justice and humane 
 treatment to the androgyne and gynander? Do you 
 still insist that these sexual cripples continue to suffer 
 physical and mental torture for another century be- 
 cause your own pleasure bulks too large for you to hear 
 and bear the truth about the despairing cross-sexed? 
 
 Why should the Christian and the Jew have al- 
 ways regarded as the one unpardonable sin the union 
 in one human body of the distinctive physical and 
 psychic earmarks of the two recognized sexes? Why 
 should they have pitied and assisted the club-footed 
 and the deaf-mute, but always endeavored to grind 
 sexual cripples to powder under their heels? 
 
 There is indeed no worse crippling than the sex- 
 ual. This is because sex, with all that it implies, is 
 
 1 Continental European civilizations are, on this subject, a 
 half -century ahead of Anglo-American. 
 
Author's Trilogy. 3 
 
 the principal physiological factor in life. Any abnor- 
 mality of sex is truly the greatest of tragedies. 
 
 Reader, what would have been your own attitude 
 on this question if God had created you, or your son 
 or daughter, a sexual intermediate, instead of some 
 stranger about whose banishment, suicide, or murder 
 you have read in the paper? Would you have driven 
 the ill-starred son or daughter from home, and hence- 
 forth treated them as dead? Or would you, when 
 their dead body was fished out of the river, be able 
 to feel pity as did a father I read about in a New York 
 paper, who exclaimed at sight of it: "Poor Jimmie! 
 How you must have suffered I" 1 
 
 My first three books on sexology form a trilogy. 
 They together set forth all phases of the life experience 
 of a bisexual university "man." To only a trifling 
 extent do they overlap. Thus the scientist wishing 
 a full account of my unique life experience must read 
 the entire trilogy. For I was predestined to an un- 
 usual role in the great drama we call "life." I was 
 brought into the world as one of the rare humans who 
 possess a strong claim, on anatomic grounds as well 
 as psychic, to membership in both the recognized sexes. 
 I was foreordained to live part of my life as man and 
 part as woman. 
 
 The first of the trilogy, the Autobiography of 
 an Androgyne, was published in January, 1919. In the 
 following June, I began a supplement, The Female- 
 Impersonators. Before September, I began to sub- 
 mit it to publishers. But they refused to do anything 
 
 iSee Part VI, chapter III. 
 
4 Enemies of Truth and Justice. 
 
 toward ameliorating the condition of the world's most 
 oppressed class. It seemed to be their opinion that 
 the world must have its scapegoat — to punish, vicari- 
 ously, for the world's own sins. For centuries, sexual 
 intermediates had served the world in that capacity. 
 
 After I had peddled the script around for two 
 years to a total of ten regular book publishers, the 
 Medico-Legal Journal, publisher of my first book, 
 consented to make the work available for those inter- 
 ested. The long delay in publication was utilized by 
 myself in improving the form. 
 
 The third of the trilogy, The Riddle of The Un- 
 derworld, has been elaborated simultaneously with 
 The Female-Impersonators. Into the latter, I put 
 the "milk for babes" (in St. Paul's language) ; into the 
 former, the "meat for strong men." I wrote the lat- 
 ter in a popular style because addressed primarily to 
 the general reader ; the former more in the style suit- 
 able for scientists. 
 
 In my Autobiography, I was almost exclusively 
 occupied with a frank exposition of what life meant 
 to me personally. In the two supplements, I have 
 been chiefly occupied in depicting characters with 
 whom I associated in the Underworld. The Bible says : 
 "Man is altogether born in sin !" But in Christendom 
 this is really true of only the one-tenth of the race 
 who people the Underworld. The other nine-tenths 
 are comparatively saints. But there exists no reason 
 for the latter's prevalent Phariseeism. For the most 
 part their moral superiority is hereditary and environ- 
 mental. 
 
 Because of my innate appetencies and avocation 
 of female-impersonator, I was fated to be a Nature- 
 
Author Repository for Underworld's Secrets. 5 
 
 appointed amateur detective. I enjoyed entree to the 
 hearts of both male and female denizens of the Under- 
 world, my stamping-ground when I surrendered my 
 bisexual body to the feminine side of my dual psyche. 
 They would whisper into my ears their innermost 
 secrets. Those who happened to be Roman Catholics 
 (because some whom I met in the Underworld were 
 only chance and rare visitors, and ordinarily able to 
 live up to high ideals) have doubtless revealed the mys- 
 teries of their inner life to their priest in the vaguest 
 terms. But with me, because as a rule ignorant of the 
 confessor's identity and not likely to meet him in 
 Overworld life, the confessions of Roman Catholic. 
 Protestant, Jew, and atheist were detailed and exhaus- 
 tive. Surely my having been thus favored by Provi- 
 dence ought to qualify me to depict little known human 
 types for those who have missed the opportunity of 
 meeting all kinds of people. 
 
 Of course, after the lapse of more than a score of 
 years, I can not recall verbatim the individual confes- 
 sions and conversations. I remember only their gen- 
 eral drift. As outlined by me, they are merely repre- 
 sentative. But Nature has endowed me with a rare 
 memory. The earliest ascertainable date is the age 
 of two years and three months, when I recall having 
 seen the coffin of a great-grandmother carried out of 
 the house. I still preserve earlier memories, such as 
 being held on my mother's lap and contemplating her 
 mountainous bare breast. I remember hearing the 
 moon whistle shrilly (the six P. M. factory whistles as 
 I gazed at the crescent moon) . 
 
 No reader should conclude from my trilogy that 
 New York has been particularly immoral. Conditions 
 
6 Why an Underworld. 
 
 are about the same in all great cities, except that those 
 of the United States are puritan towns compared with 
 Europe. I have explored the Underworld in many- 
 cities of both continents, being temperamentally quali- 
 fied. But in America's smaller cities west of the merid- 
 ian of Kansas City, the sexual Underworld is more 
 bold and wields more political power than anywhere 
 else in the United States or Europe. 
 
 An Underworld exists in all cities of any size be- 
 cause human nature is what it is, and because of the 
 social usages decreed by the blind Overworld, which 
 happens to include the vast majority of mankind. 
 Man is descended from the beasts, and still retains 
 many of their instincts — particularly true of the 
 atypic or atavic who throng the red-light districts. 
 
 As the Medical World said of my Autobiogra- 
 phy of an Androgyne, the present work also "will 
 be found a revelation of things undreamed of by most 
 people. It is a contribution to the almost unexplored 
 field of abnormal psychology," 
 
The Third Sex. 
 
 II. The Place of the Androgyne in the Male Sex Scale. 
 
 Throughout the ages that mankind have trod the 
 earth, a broad and endless stream of masculinity has 
 coursed along until swallowed in the ocean of eternity. 
 In all streams — whether of water, lava, or manhood — 
 the particles at the center flow most rapidly and the 
 speed gradually decreases toward the banks. At oc- 
 casional points along the latter, the particles are sta- 
 tionary, or there is even an eddy. 
 
 (1) The Tremendously Virile cause the surg- 
 ing rapids at the center of the masculine river. Their 
 pre-eminent characteristic lies in excessive venery and 
 excessive promiscuity. Sex holds by far the chief 
 place in their thoughts. A large part of their waking 
 hours is spent in the torture of unsatisfied longing. 
 Their conversation with business intimates tends to 
 sexual lines. They are the "black sheep" of families, 
 never letting an opportunity go by without improving 
 it. They are the seducers of girls under puberty. 
 They are largely instrumental in securing a continuous 
 flow of recruits to the rapidly decimating demimonde. 
 Indeed the tremendously virile constitute the latter's 
 chief raison d'etre. 
 
 Their ambition being to be "the husbands of all 
 women," the tremendously virile, among Christian 
 nations, often do not marry. If they do, a separation 
 or divorce follows within a few years. 
 
 As a rule, only these free lances — as long as under 
 thirty — appeal to androgynes as "heroes." To them 
 
8 The Tremendously Virile. 
 
 alone do these pseudo-men yearn to devote themselves 
 as slaves. 
 
 As a rule, the tremendously virile are not gentle- 
 men. For they possess not even a vestige of mild or 
 semi-feminine traits. They are overbearing, quar- 
 relsome, and pugnacious. They will not take a back 
 seat for any one. They constitute the raw material 
 for the roughest, rudest, and most death-defying oc- 
 cupations, as volunteer soldiers and sailors, pugilists, 
 highwaymen, and burglars. They abhor prosaic work. 
 
 As a rule, the tremendously virile are men of only 
 three interests in life: fighting (including the slaugh- 
 ter of dumb beasts, in their inability to give the same 
 treatment to their fellow man) ; sport in the usual 
 sense of that word; and the sexual instinct. But a 
 mere handful, whom Nature endowed with unusual 
 brain power, have been leaders in war and politics. 
 In the United States, I dare instance only Mohammed, 
 Henry the Eighth, Louis the Fourteenth, and Bis- 
 marck. But leaders of the American nation have be- 
 longed to this tremendously virile class. I dare not 
 name them because cultured society, with their present 
 mediaeval ideas on sex, severely censure men of this 
 class as "bestial." But the latter are fundamentally 
 irresponsible. 
 
 In absolute monarchies and aristocracies almost 
 throughout history, the tremendously virile have been 
 at the helm of the ship of state. Because they have 
 been, by birth, the greatest fighters. They thus forged 
 to the front and pre-empted for themselves and their 
 posterity the best things of life. Their constituting 
 themselves the ruling class has rendered history, for 
 the most part, a record of wars. Tremendous virility, 
 
The Ultra-Virile. 9 
 
 combined with unusual brain power, makes the born 
 leader of men, before whose will the masses bow un- 
 questioningly and they blindly turn themselves into 
 "cannon fodder" at his beck and call. Only since the 
 dawn of the nineteenth century have the mildly virile 
 been coming into their own, and brain and science be- 
 ginning to get the upper hand over brute force. The 
 recent World War was the final resurgence of the tre- 
 mendously virile as moulders of the destinies of na- 
 tions, as well as the death blow to their ambitions in 
 this direction. 
 
 As the status of peoples descends from the en- 
 lightened to the savage, the proportion that this class 
 forms of the entire male sex gradually increases. 
 Among enlightened nations, I estimate it at five per 
 cent on the basis of my intimate mingling, in the role 
 of a soubrette, with several thousand young bachelors 
 belonging exclusively to either the tremendously or 
 ultra-virile class, while nearly all my every-day asso- 
 ciates have belonged to the mildly virile. 
 
 On the basis of my reading in anthropology, I 
 estimate the proportion among savages at seventy- 
 five per cent. Among the adult males, I have read 
 that women constitute almost the sole topic of conver- 
 sation. Fighting and sport fill up the rest of life. 
 When an explorer has visited a savage or barbarous 
 tribe, the outstanding hospitality is the provision of 
 a bed-fellow belonging to the gentle sex. 
 
 (2) The Ultra- Virile, on either side of the sex- 
 ually fastest flowing particles just described, take 
 their less rapid course in the stream of masculinity. 
 Sex occupies their thoughts to a much less extent. 
 But, like the tremendously virile, they are naturally 
 
10 Natural Polygamy. 
 
 polygamous. Only these two classes of males, to- 
 gether with ultra-androgynes and a small proportion 
 of the mildly androgynous, sow wild oats, beginning 
 in their later teens and ending usually in their later 
 twenties. Prior to settling down in marriage, the 
 ultra-virile secretly do not care a fig for the sexual 
 mandates of Christian society. But for the sake of 
 appearances, they hypocritically chime in with the 
 regnant note and openly condemn in the harshest terms 
 the least infraction of the conventions by another than 
 themselves. After marriage, however, their infideli- 
 ties are few and far between. Perhaps a score in a 
 life-time, as compared with a thousand upward for the 
 tremendously virile. 
 
 The ultra-virile make excellent husbands and di- 
 vorce is rare. The wife, however, while herself occu- 
 pying first place in the husband's affections, has much 
 cause for jealousy. 
 
 While the ultra-virile do not regularly choose an 
 occupation free from prosaic toil and ministering to 
 love of sport and adventure, they are usually averse 
 to intellectual pursuits, favoring the manual. If 
 possessing unusual brain power, the ultra-virile man 
 heads some engineering or construction enterprise. 
 The ultra-virile build our railroads, great bridges, 
 leviathans, and sky-scrapers. A handful arje dis- 
 tinguished by a knack for political leadership and 
 have contributed the vast majority of such leaders. 
 
 Both the tremendously and the ultra-virile tend to 
 excel in physique and comeliness. Some athletes, 
 however, are only mildly virile. "Virility" refers 
 only to sexual power. More than the ordinary 
 
 erotic ardor, however, usually goes hand in hand with 
 
The Mildly Virile. 11 
 
 brawn, just as intellectual tastes and spirituality do 
 with brain. With the evolution of the race in cul- 
 ture, erotic ardor, together with the animal side of 
 man's nature in general, is declining. The goal for 
 which the race is headed is the minimum of sexual 
 consciousness, coitus for procreation only, just enough 
 offspring to keep the number of the human race on 
 earth stationary, lengthened life, and ever increasing 
 expansion of the intellectual in man at the expense of 
 the physical. With this evolution, the proportion of 
 sterile bisexuals will also increase. 
 
 The fighting forces of a nation are almost entirely 
 made up of the two more virile classes, although to- 
 gether constituting only about twenty-five per cent of 
 the total manhood of civilized nations. It is dangerous 
 for the world's peace when these two classes get con- 
 trol of a great nation's government. Of the five 
 classes of males being described, these two alone love 
 war and seek occasion for it. 
 
 (3) The Mildly Virile constitute, among so- 
 called "Christian" nations, about seventy-five per cent 
 of all males. 1 Only on rare occasions do thoughts 
 
 1 A physician of wide experience who read the above before 
 publication argued that in the United States, only five per 
 cent are mildly virile. I stand unconvinced that my proportion 
 is in error. The proportion surely differs with racial types and 
 environment. The physician has always lived in New York City 
 and practiced among liberal-minded, non-church, pleasure-lov- 
 ing people of Teutonic or Latin parentage. My own every-day 
 associates, particularly in the village where I was brought up 
 and which I still frequently visit, have been, almost entirely, 
 ultra-puritan Anglo-Saxons. When I maintained their sexual 
 temperance, the physician declared them hypocrites, whose 
 secret practice is the same as "worldlings'." I have been inti- 
 mately acquainted with hundreds of these male puritan church- 
 devotees, and am convinced they are hypocrites solely in sup- 
 posing their sexual moderation due to their own superior morals. 
 Sex has naturally small place in their lives. 
 
12 Natural Monogamy. 
 
 about sexual congress enter their minds. That is, if 
 married, they desire it only about once a fortnight or 
 so, and up to the date of marriage, the incentive is so 
 weak that they never gratify it. Thus up to the bridal 
 night, this class three have usually been as chaste as 
 their better halves. They have usually never indulged 
 even in masturbation, while the generality of classes 
 one and two have indulged frequently from around 
 the age of ten to the period in which opportunities 
 cum femina or cum androgyna become plentiful. In 
 the mildly virile man's ignorance of the force of sex 
 in classes one and two, however, he has been known to 
 be obsessed with the delusion that sex in himself is 
 strongly developed. The mildly virile always marry, 
 although a few postpone it until much past thirty. 
 Subsequently they have at most only negligible desires 
 to drink water at a strange cistern. They are content 
 to go to their graves having been absolutely faithful 
 to the lawful wife, or several successive ones, that God 
 gave them. Divorce is almost unknown, since its cause, 
 in nearly every case, is de facto polygamy in the hus- 
 band, or his excessive demands on the frigid wife — two 
 faults absent from the psyche of the mildly virile. 
 
 The sexual life of the latter flows on gently and 
 smoothly. It is called humdrum by the tremendously 
 virile, continuously wafted up and down in a dizzy 
 fashion in the rapids at the center of the masculine 
 river. But what the mildly virile miss of the "pep" of 
 life is more than compensated by the blissful peace 
 that characterizes their earthly journey. 
 
 Their abhorrence of androgynism is many times 
 as intense as in the case of the more virile. While not 
 a single mildly virile man would ever succumb to 
 
Anaphrodites. 13 
 
 androgyne allurements, I have ascertained through 
 many years' association with thousands of tremen- 
 dously or ultra-virile that at least seventy-five per cent 
 readily suffer capture providing their sexual needs 
 are not already abundantly gratified. The chief 
 reason for the bitter antagonism of the mildly virile 
 is that they know androgynism only by hearsay. 
 They have not, like the more virile — to whom alone 
 androgynes gravitate — been eye-witnesses of the en- 
 tirely innocent, innocuous, and even pitiable sexuality 
 of these pseudo-men. 
 
 The mildly virile, constituting the vast majority 
 of all males in "Christian" countries, seek to impose 
 the dictates of their own sexual natures upon all men 
 whatsoever. The sexual mandates of "Christian" 
 society and of the New Testament express the sex 
 feelings in part of the mildly virile, and in part of the 
 anaphrodites. Whatever harmonizes with these feel- 
 ings is right; whatever fails to, is "bestial." 
 
 The mildly virile are inclined toward the less 
 strenuous occupations, as agriculture, manufacturing, 
 and trade. They also include ninety-five per cent of 
 intellectuals. 
 
 (4) The cold Anaphrodites are the particles 
 that cling immovably to the banks of the masculine 
 river. 1 They neither progress nor regress. They 
 number about one-half of one per cent of all adult 
 males. Like the ultra-androgynes, they have a horror 
 of women from the sex point of view. But unlike the 
 
 1 Do not confuse with anaphrodites the excessively rare 
 men who are attracted by female beauty and manners, marry, 
 but then desire merely Platonic relations. Such are rather 
 cases of impotence. The genuine anaphrodite never even courts 
 a woman. 
 
14 St. Paul's Sex Teachings. 
 
 former, their minds are devoid of hero-worship and 
 they shudder violently at the very thought of any kind 
 of association grounded on sex differences. Their 
 anaphroditism is either an after-effect of an illness in 
 childhood or congenital. 
 
 For the most part, anaphrodites are intellectuals. 
 The exquisite joys associated with courtship and 
 marriage that they are predestined never to know are 
 more than compensated by Providence in the way of 
 extra allotment of intellectual enjoyment. Herbert 
 Spencer is the shining example of anaphroditism of 
 the nineteenth century. 1 
 
 Since anaphrodites are not suffused with ador- 
 ation for any type of human, the vast majority are the 
 more inclined to lift their thoughts to their Creator. 
 Some great religious leaders have been anaphrodites. 
 St. Paul, in his epistles, shows little patience even with 
 normal sex phenomena. He advises that every man 
 imitate his own absolute celibacy. "But if they can 
 not contain, let them marry. For it is better to marry 
 than to burn [to lust]." 
 
 It is impossible for the tremendously or the ultra- 
 sexed to live up to the sexual ideals of an anaphrodite. 
 And yet St. Paul's epistles bind them upon Christians. 
 It is infinitely easier for an anaphrodite to be a saint 
 than for the ultra-virile to be even decent. St. Paul's 
 sex teachings constitute the greatest stumbling block 
 of the church. They have caused the human race a 
 
 1 The author has always preferred to read biography to 
 fiction. If his life is spared, he will write an extensive work on 
 the sexuality of noted men and women. An unusually large 
 proportion of geniuses have been either anaphrodites or andro- 
 gynes. For example, Sir Isaac Newton and Immanuel Kant 
 appear to have been anaphrodites. 
 
Androgynes. 15 
 
 world of woe. Belief in St. Paul's inerrancy makes it 
 impossible to reconcile Christian ethics with the 
 incontrovertible teachings of Nature. While, in 
 respect to value to the human race, I give St. Paul's 
 epistles first place among all published documents (the 
 woe they have occasioned being, a thousand times over, 
 outweighed by the light they have given man on the 
 greatest questions that puzzle his brain) I must, par- 
 ticularly because of their false sex doctrines, deny 
 their inerrancy. If inerrant, the human race ought 
 to have ceased existence eighteen hundred years ago. 
 
 Jesus made no such blunders in his sex teaching. 
 He was the only biblical teacher apparently to recog- 
 nize the existence of androgynes without thundering 
 against them. As "eunuchs from their mother's 
 womb," he may of course have had in mind only 
 anaphrodites. But apparently he was aware of the 
 existence of androgynes, St. John the Divine, 
 apparently his favorite disciple, having possessed the 
 earmarks, particularly "softness" of disposition. 
 
 (5) Androgynes are the eddies along the banks of 
 the masculine river. Their movement is retrograde. 
 They are instances of arrest of development. In the 
 early f cetus sex is not apparent. Only later does differ- 
 entiation begin. In more than ninety-nine out of a 
 hundred humans, it is completed at puberty. But 
 the individual androgyne or gynander remains, down 
 to death, to a greater or less degree bisexual. Just as 
 a mule is part horse and part donkey, so an androgyne 
 or gynander is part man and part woman. To quote 
 from Krafft Ebing: "They [androgynes] are neither 
 man nor woman: a mixture of both; with secondary 
 
16 Acquired or Congenital? 
 
 psychic and physical characteristics of the one as well 
 as the other sex." 1 
 
 Androgynes tend to occupations having to do with 
 
 1 I take no stock in the theory advanced by some medical 
 writers that androgynism (generally termed male sexual inver- 
 sion) is acquired and not congenital. The exceptional method 
 of sexual expression can be acquired only by individuals con- 
 genially on the very borderline between androgynes on the one 
 hand and anaphrodites or mildly virile on the other. The latest 
 proponent of the "acquired" theory, Dr. P. M. Lichtenstein, in 
 the August, 1921, issue of MEDICAL REVIEW OF REVIEWS, 
 suggests that masturbation in boyhood may produce in adult- 
 hood a fairie or ultra-androgyne. In my physical prime, I was 
 a fairie of extreme type. I never masturbated as a child or as 
 an adult because of acute horror. My own pudenda never had 
 any part in my sexual ardor — any more than had my vermiform 
 appendix. 
 
 Dr. Lichtenstein's suggestion of the correction by parents 
 of feminine predilections in small boys is futile. Those femin- 
 esque traits, when congenital, as I believe they always are in 
 ultra-androgynes, can not be suppressed. Likewise his advice 
 that the adolescent girl-boy seek the company of the gentle sex 
 as a cure is as futile. In my teens, I forced myself to it, but it 
 had not the least curative value. 
 
 Note Added in Galley: I just came across a scrap of a 
 recent NEW YORK WORLD Sunday magazine, containing 
 "Glands That Govern Our Lives", name of author missing. I 
 quote: "The not uncommon phenomena of the smooth-faced 
 man with a feminine voice and a figure resembling that of a 
 woman, and of the deep-voiced, hairy-faced masculine woman, 
 are produced by abnormalities in the development of these 
 glands." Only in the third decade of the twentieth century is 
 the comparatively new branch of medical science, endocrinology 
 (the study of glands, particularly the ductless) coming forward 
 to maintain the irresponsibility of "homosexualists" for their 
 indiosyncrasy. It has also only just been brought into the lime- 
 light that the testicles are invigorating (as well as masculiniz- 
 ing) to the individual possessing them and the prime reason 
 for man's being physically stronger than woman. I myself, 
 for several years after castration at the age of twenty-seven, 
 observed a marked diminution in mv stamina. (For details, 
 see my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE.) My own 
 testicles were abnormal judged by the fact that I, though al- 
 ways having intense horror of self-manustupration, suffered 
 from acute spermatorrhea from the incidence of puberty up to 
 castration, while I was totally devoid of the propensity natural 
 to full-fledged adult males for emptying the seminal vesicles. 
 
Androgynes Are Aesthetes. 17 
 
 art — in the widest sense of that word. They are ex- 
 treme aesthetes. I quote from Edward Carpenter's 
 Love's Coming-of-Age (published by Boni and Live- 
 right) page 135, where he speaks of male urnings, 
 called by myself "androgynes": "At the bot- 
 tom lies the artist-nature, with the artist's sensibility 
 and perception. Such a one is often a dreamer, of 
 brooding reserved habits, often a musician, or a man 
 of culture, .... almost always with a peculiar inborn 
 refinement. De Joux .... says . . . . : 'They are enthusi- 
 astic for poetry and music, are often eminently skilful 
 in the fine arts, and are overcome with emotion and 
 sympathy at the least sad occurrence .... The nerve 
 system of many an urning is the finest and the most 
 complicated musical instrument in the service of the 
 interior personality that can be imagined.' " (R. Ws 
 comment: An androgyne is usually a bundle of 
 nerves.) 
 
 In my university course in aesthetics, the pro- 
 fessor lamented that art tends to make its devotees 
 immoral. He probably had in mind the notorious 
 frequency of homosexuality among aesthetes. But 
 he got the cart before the horse. The aesthetes affect- 
 ed were born bisexual and their devotion to art was a 
 consequence. 
 
 Androgynes are clearly of two types, each of 
 which, the author estimates, constitutes in the United 
 States about one out of every three hundred humans 
 possessing the male primary determinants: 1 (a) The 
 
 1 Other authorities make them more numerous. I quote 
 from Love's Coming of Age, page 125: "Dr. Grabowsky. . . . 
 quotes figures.... as high as one man in every 22, while Dr. 
 Albert Moll (Die Contraere Sexual-Empfindung, chapter 3) 
 gives estimates varying from one in every 50 to as low as one 
 
18 The Mildly Androgynous. 
 
 mildly androgynous, of whom Oscar Wilde is the best 
 known of contemporaries; and (b) the ultra-andro- 
 gynous, of whom the present writer is the most widely 
 known of his generation. 
 
 (a) The anatomy of the mildly androgynous is 
 not conspicuously feminine. Only a few feminine 
 traits appear in the psyche. The mildly androgynous 
 always mingle with full-fledged males and seek to pass 
 as such themselves. As a cloak, they are prone to 
 fabricate about excesses cum femina. But while se- 
 cretly preferring homosexual romance, they are cap- 
 able of espousing a woman and begetting children. 
 
 in every 500. These figures apply to such as are exclusively 
 of the said nature [excluding the psychic hermaphrodites. In- 
 cluding the latter] the estimates must be greatly higher.... 
 Some late statistical inquiries (See Statistische Untersuchungen, 
 Dr. M. Hirschfeld, Leipzig, 1904) yield 1.5 to 2 per cent as a 
 probable ratio." 
 
 I myself have fixed upon the median of ratios I have read, 
 as well as the frequency that has occurred to me as a result 
 of a half-century's unusually intimate mingling with all social 
 types in many nations, having possessed, at the time I lived 
 in the foreign nations, some speaking ability in seven foreign 
 languages. But the frequency is greater than I have given in 
 the text rather than less. But the extreme German estimates 
 are too high for the United States. It is my conclusion from 
 intimate intercourse with the natives in many countries that 
 the frequency of bisexuality per thousand is proportional to 
 the density of population. Nature puts a break on over-popu- 
 lation by increasing the proportion of sterile bisexuals. When 
 a population is regularly underfed, the number of bisexuals 
 born appears to increase. But that is not the only factor. An- 
 other law is that when a consanguineous multifamily (a group 
 of families) multiplies with exceptional rapidity, bisexuals are 
 born in that family even though the food supply is undiminished. 
 The author believes the latter to be the reason he himself was 
 born bisexual. It was because the generic womb (i. e., those 
 of my grandmothers for several generations) had been over- 
 taxed. 
 
 The ratio is probably much higher among the cultured — 
 particularly art devotees — than among the "hoi polloi." 
 
The Ultra- Androgynous. 19 
 
 Sexologists have therefore called them "psychic herm- 
 aphrodites." 
 
 (b) In ultra-androgynes alone, the physique is 
 noticeably feminesque, and the psyche predominantly 
 feminine. As a rule, they alone have a craze to dec- 
 orate themselves in feminine finery and spread paint 
 and powder on their faces. They tend to avoid the 
 society of full-fledged males except to display to a 
 tremendously virile coterie — to whom they are gen- 
 erally incognito — their skill in female-impersonation. 
 
 Unless otherwise indicated I shall use the terms 
 "androgyne" and "pseudo-man" only in reference to 
 the ultra-androgynous. All my androgyne associates 
 whom I shall portray in this book belong to this class, 
 because with a few exceptions they alone are Female- 
 Impersonators. In my Riddle of the Underworld 
 I describe some mild androgynes. 
 
 There exists vast diversity in the anatomy and 
 psyche of androgynes — just as, from the standpoint 
 of size and shape of the genitalia and sexual tastes, any 
 two full-fledged males or any two full-fledged females 
 differ more or less. In one androgyne, the only 
 conspicuous external feminine stigma may be absence 
 of beardal growth; in another, mammary glands; in 
 another, the complete skeleton or the complete mus- 
 cular system of the female. The one physical fem- 
 inine stigma that is indispensable to the possession of 
 a decidedly feminine psyche and the quasi-female 
 method of sexual expression is the female variety of 
 brain protoplasm. For there have probably lived 
 naturally beardless men, males possessing milk glands 
 or sissie voices, etc., who have nevertheless not been at 
 all homosexual. But such are exceptions to the rule. 
 
20 A Medical Superstition. 
 
 While an earmark of ultra-androgynism is sexual 
 passivity, the mildly androgynous may be active ped- 
 erasts or mutual onanists. Only in the case of ultra- 
 androgynes are the individual's genitalia entirely 
 divorced — as a rule — from the sexual life. For them, 
 Nature has substituted other organs. 
 
 Ultra-androgynes are, by birth, practically iden- 
 tical with males castrated in early childhood, except 
 that adult artificial eunuchs are usually overlarge. 
 Adult ultra-androgynes tend merely to plumpness as 
 a result of their dwarfed genitalia. 
 
 I have heard of ultra-androgynes, who, in their 
 early twenties, on their physician's advice, married a 
 woman, when Nature intended they should marry a 
 man. All high-minded "homosexualists," soon after 
 arrival at puberty, consult a medical man for a cure. 
 From time immemorial it has been one of the pro- 
 fession's superstitions that marriage would cure 
 homosexual tendencies. Some unsophisticated ad- 
 olescent androgynes put faith in their physician's 
 positive assurance that marriage is a sure cure. If, 
 as a matter of conscience alone, the androgyne prom- 
 ises the physician to marry, he sometimes goes insane 
 over the dread of it, or else commits suicide, either on 
 the eve of marriage, or a few days afterward. But even 
 if the marriage ceremony is performed, the consumma- 
 tion never takes place in the case of ultra-androgynes, 
 and the wedded state proves very unhappy for both 
 parties. At least in the case of the ultra-androgynes, 
 such marriage possesses no curative value. Chronic 
 and extreme homosexuality is congenital and incurable. 
 It is monstrous to advise even a mild androgyne to 
 marry, and thus contribute to propagating a line of 
 
Hermaphrodites. 21 
 
 unhappy and unwelcome bisexuals down through the 
 centuries. 
 
 The two classes of androgynes do not mix well. 
 Just as the full-fledged man is averse to attendance at 
 a ladies' sewing-circle. Particularly the mildly an- 
 drogynous fear suspicion of their secret if they asso- 
 ciated with ultra-androgynes. Coteries of ultra-an- 
 drogynes naturally form. Knowing their own nature, 
 they readily recognize one another, although down to 
 1921 at least, the sexually full-fledged have usually 
 been blind to the androgynism of daily associates, be- 
 cause never permitted to learn of their existence. 
 
 (6) Pseudo-Hermaphrodites are humans pos- 
 sessing in part both the male and the female genitalia, 
 or else organs so deformed that even sexologists are 
 unable to determine the sex until puberty. In half 
 such cases, the physician then pronounces the individ- 
 ual to belong to the sex other than that with which he 
 or she has identified him or herself. As a rule, they 
 subsequently live and clothe themselves per prescrip- 
 tion. But some, accustomed to the dress and usages 
 of their first sex, choose to identify themselves with 
 it throughout life. 
 
 Pseudo-hermaphrodites are the limit toward 
 which the ultra-androgynous approach by slight gra- 
 dations. Their frequency is not greater than one in 
 a million to ten million humans. 
 
 (7) Full Human Hermaphrodites — possessing 
 both complete male and complete female genitalia — 
 have never been encountered. There exists in medical 
 annals, however, a pseudo-hermaphrodite who so near- 
 ly approached full hermaphrodism that at one period 
 he-she claimed to have lived as husband and father, 
 
22 The Sex Scale. 
 
 and at a later, as wife and mother. This reputed trans- 
 position is in accord with the observed phenomenon 1 
 of an individual's passing over from one sex class to 
 another at the climacteric corresponding to menopause 
 in woman. 
 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 I have a theory that the sex class of an individual 
 male depends on the size, but particularly the vigor, 
 of his physical reproductive apparatus. I have ascer- 
 tained such variety to be practically infinite, and 
 psychicly as well as physically. 
 
 There exist no sharp dividing lines among the 
 six classes of males. While the bulk of a particular 
 class correspond closely to the description, there are 
 individuals on each side of such mode who constitute 
 slight gradations over to the next class. Thus each 
 class gradually and almost imperceptibly shades off 
 into the next. There exists indeed a sex scale along 
 which all human beings can be theoretically arranged. 
 At one pole stands the tremendously virile man — for 
 example, the rough volunteer common soldier, as a rule 
 intensely polygamous; at the other the petite, cry- 
 baby species of woman. Androgynes and gynanders 
 occupy exactly the middle section, looking toward both 
 the male and the female side. 
 
 It is quasi-instinctive with each sex class to scorn 
 members of another class just because they happen to 
 be built on a different plan. It is the same phenome- 
 non prevalent in the religious domain in past centur- 
 ies, when the Roman Catholic yearned to murder the 
 Protestant and vice versa. Which intolerance the 
 
 i See later chapter: THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY THE 
 HERMAPHRODITOI IN GENERAL. 
 
Sex Animosity. 23 
 
 gradual conquest of human affairs by reason is push- 
 ing further and further into the background. But 
 still in the twentieth century, reason is a nonentity in 
 the domain of sex. There all is illogical instinct and 
 bigotry. Each sex class still revels in calling the 
 others bad names. The tremendously virile "fellow" 
 bellows out at the mildly : "You milk-sop!" The latter 
 calls back: "You rake!" The ultra-virile hisses 
 through his teeth at the anaphrodite: "You dried 
 tree!" The mildly virile points his finger at the 
 androgyne : "Unclean ! Unclean ! Child of the devil ! 
 Monster!" And even if I do not say so here, the 
 reader will conclude after finishing this book: The 
 androgyne calls back at the mildly virile : "You hypo- 
 crite ! You Pharisee !" For the outstanding earmark 
 of the mildly virile is Phariseeism. They think they 
 themselves are the only moral and God-fearing men 
 in the world, and that all other men are sexually vile. 
 
 Is it right to chastise a horse because he prefers 
 to munch hay out of a manger instead of walking into 
 his owner's dining-room ; throwing himself backwards 
 into an enormous chair; squeezing with difficulty a 
 spoon between his two front hoofs ; and with it carry- 
 ing to his mouth ice-cream and French pastry? The 
 average man (who is of the mildly virile type) says 
 that the latter is, for every creature, the superior 
 method of taking nourishment, and insists on all 
 others conforming to what is right in his own eyes. 
 If they do not, he ostracizes and even imprisons and 
 murders those who dare to offend his aesthetic sense. 
 
 In general, man is a free agent. But his sex class 
 is imposed by Providence. Just as he is not responsi- 
 ble for the face he has to carry through life. 
 
24 Poultry Bisexuality. 
 
 Why should not every human be at liberty to live 
 out his life in the way Nature ordains for him so far as 
 he does not thereby transgress against any one else? 1 
 
 1 Bisexuality occurs also in animals and birds, but far less 
 frequently than among humans. Perhaps this difference is due 
 to the fact that the human male and female differ much less in 
 respect to secondary sexual determinants than do most birds and 
 animals. Several times in my life I have come across a news- 
 paper item such as the following. I inquired of a poulterer, who 
 informed me that he has had numerous hens that crowed and 
 possessed secondary male determinants. 
 
 CROWS AND LAYS EGG. IS IT COCK OR HEN? 
 
 Copyright by Press Publishing Co. (NEW YORK WORLD), 1921 
 
 (Special cable despatch to the WORLD) 
 
 LONDON, Dec. 9. — A Buff Orpington cock at a poultry 
 show in the agricultural hall at Islington has laid an egg. This 
 bird began its career with all the attributes of a sure-enough 
 hen. It laid eggs and cackled over them in time-honored fash- 
 ion. Its head, plumage, and habits were all hen-like. 
 
 As it grew, its conformation underwent a subtle change. 
 It began to grow a cock's comb, sprouted a cock's tail, developed 
 spurs and crowed on appropriate occasions — but continued to 
 lay eggs. When its owner exhibited it as a "cock-hen" and 
 claimed despite its male affiliation, that it produced eggs, all 
 the poultry fanciers derisively nicknamed it "Bluff Orpington." 
 
 One doubter offered to pay one hundred pounds if the bird 
 laid an egg. It was watched day and night for the coming of 
 the marvel, and yesterday duly presented its watchers with an 
 excellent egg Physiologists are dumbfounded 
 
The Third Sex. 25 
 
 III. Androgynes of Mythology and History. 
 
 APOLLO is the pre-eminent androgyne god. He 
 was always represented with a feminine face and 
 coiffure, and therefore worshipped as the god of 
 beauty. 
 
 In conformity with his semi-femininity, he was 
 the life-giving and light-giving deity — both physical 
 and figurative life and light. He was the leader of 
 the muses — the spirits presiding over all human in- 
 spiration in the fine arts. 
 
 The artistic instinct — the poetic temperament, 
 "sentimentality" in its highest sense — goes hand in 
 hand with a rounding-off of the sharp corners of mas- 
 culinity. Artistic or poetic decades have been con- 
 spicuous because of a semi-slumbering of fundamental 
 masculine traits, that is, the instinctive relish for 
 wrangling and war. The sterner sex has temporarily 
 laid aside its primal fighting function ordained by 
 Nature and become to some degree effeminate. 
 
 As a rule, abstract beauty's devotees — "aesthetes" 
 in the highest sense, that is: poets, novelists, painters, 
 sculptors, and superior musicians — have been char- 
 acterized by more or less effeminacy. They have been 
 particularly prone to homosexuality. While among 
 full-fledged males, the proportion that has achieved 
 proficiency in one of the fine arts is something like one 
 in a thousand, among androgynes (the two varieties 
 combined), it has been one in about twenty. I will 
 later point out that the pinnacle in poetry, sculpture, 
 and painting has been achieved by androgynes. 
 
26 Apollo. 
 
 But the feminesque Apollo was the god not only 
 of beauty, but of adolescence — the period of life dur- 
 ing which human beauty is at its culmination. He 
 possessed eternal youth. He is even referred to as 
 "the boy god." Adoration of him sprang out of man's 
 delight in the semi-womansouled and quasi-woman- 
 bodied stripling just before arrival at puberty. 
 
 And ultra-androgynes remain — to a large extent 
 — in that pre-puberty period down to thirty-five. 
 Their development has been arrested. Full-fledged 
 male associates absolutely ignorant of the existence 
 of androgynism have described — in the author's hear- 
 ing — androgynes even close to fifty years old as "still 
 mere boys." 
 
 But an adolescent androgyne or boy god was also 
 worshipped by the Semite nations (other than the 
 Jews) under the name Ablu, and by the Celts under 
 the name Maponus. 
 
 Philologists will recognize that "Apollo," "Ablu," 
 "Maponus," and "boy" are descended from the same 
 vocable in the language used by the Asiatic tribe from 
 which most of the civilized nations of the ancient and 
 modern world derive. B is only a strengthened p ; the 
 liquid I has often been transmuted into the kindred n ; 
 and the diphthong oij indicates the elision of a liquid. 
 We have here etymological evidence that an adoles- 
 cent-androgyne deity was worshipped before the dawn 
 of history. 
 
 To-day, among some primitive races, as the 
 aborigines of America, androgynes are the central fea- 
 ture of the most sacred rites. 
 
Hermaphroditos and Ganymede. 27 
 
 Hermaphroditos stands secona among androgyne 
 gods. The myth is that "he-she" was originally a full- 
 fledged human adolescent and an entirely separate 
 nymph in the full flower of feminine charm. The 
 nymph, falling in love, besought Zeus that the adoles- 
 cent and herself might be forever amalgamated. Ex- 
 cepting the pudenda, the body remained that of the 
 nymph. The psyche became a compound of the mas- 
 culine and the feminine. This myth was a poetic 
 recognition of the existence, at the very dawn of his- 
 tory, of androgynes such as exist to-day. 
 
 A picture or statue of Hermaphroditos adorned 
 nearly every Greek and Roman home of the better 
 class. This was because the ancients held the andro- 
 gyne in honor as the super-human — man and woman in 
 one individual. 
 
 Ganymede ranks third. 1 Originally a human ado- 
 lescent of extraordinary feminesque beauty, Zeus 
 snatched him up into the heavenly zone and conferred 
 immortality that the feminesque youth might be his 
 cup-bearer. The latter's statues represent him with 
 a mademoiselle's chevelure, hips, and legs, but with 
 male breasts and pudenda. The fact that the father- 
 god of the classic world entered into this most intimate 
 
 1 "Catamite" is the Latin, as well as modern, corruption of 
 the vocable "Ganymede." For the relation between Jupiter and 
 Ganymede, see Dr. Wm. Lee Howard's Pederasty vs. Prostitu- 
 tion in Journal of the American Medical Association, May 15, 
 1897. Also Plato's Phaedo. Greek literature in general is suf- 
 fused with pederasty. I read Greek six years in "prep" and 
 university. My observation is that androgyne scholars have 
 a penchant for that language and drift into teaching it. Prior 
 to the twentieth century, the Greek and Latin masterpieces — in 
 all "preps" and colleges read unexpurgated because the sexually 
 full-fledged have not generally understood the homosexual de- 
 scriptions — were the only publications affording androgynes an 
 inkling of the secrets of their sex life. 
 
28 Socrates. 
 
 union partly explains why the androgyne was held in 
 honor by the Greeks and Romans. 
 
 Socrates is the earliest historic character whom 
 sexologists have declared an androgyne. For centur- 
 ies, a common designation of male homosexuality has 
 been "Socratic love." In Plato's "Dialogues," Socrates 
 is the teacher. His remarks of extreme affection to his 
 youthful disciples are sickening even to me, though an 
 androgyne myself. Present-day scholars who close 
 their eyes to the facts of androgynism, who cling to 
 mediaeval sex ideas, and hence hold homosexuality to 
 result from deep-eyed moral depravity, have denounced 
 Socrates as the greatest moral leper that ever lived. 
 But from Socrates' own generation down through the 
 nineteenth century, he was universally recognized as 
 the greatest saint of the classic world. 
 
 That Socrates was a married man and father and 
 wore a beard does not disprove the sexologists' claim. 
 The mildly androgynous — psychic hermaphrodites, 
 like Oscar Wilde — occasionally marry and procreate; 
 chiefly for social reasons, not from the sexual incen- 
 tive. Secondly, the razor was practically unknown in 
 Socrates' generation. Even to-day, some of the less 
 extreme androgynes wear a full beard because of hor- 
 ror of a razor. 
 
 One of the three charges on which Socrates was 
 condemned to death was that he was "a corrupter of 
 youth ;" the identic charge that landed Oscar Wilde in 
 prison. But neither of these geniuses ever corrupted 
 any youth. The prevalent idea that the association of 
 an older androgyne with a sexually full-fledged young- 
 er man corrupts the latter is absolutely groundless. 
 The androgyne only benefits, in several ways, the ado- 
 
Plato. 29 
 
 lescent whom he loves far more than a father loves 
 an only son. Socrates' two most brilliant disciples, 
 Plato and Xenophon, wrote books, still extant, one of 
 the purposes of which was defence of Socrates from 
 the charge mentioned. 
 
 Plato, the St. Paul of the pagan classic world — as 
 was its Jesus (Socrates) — was an androgyne. His 
 voluminous "Dialogues" — one of the world's two score 
 of literary masterpieces — are permeated with homo- 
 sexuality. In the Symposium, Plato confesses himself 
 a homosexualist. In his day, homosexuality was not 
 regarded a disgrace any more than heterosexuality. 
 The charge against Socrates was largely a pretext, the 
 politicians having to give some plausible reason for 
 ridding themselves of him. 
 
 Plato's falsetto voice — a common characteristic of 
 androgynes — is commented on in writings of his day 
 still extant. He never married nor procreated. 
 
 Alexander the Great has been adjudged by sex- 
 ologists an androgyne of the mild type. He was the 
 first prominent Greek to dispense with hirsute decora- 
 tions. The probability is that he was naturally beard- 
 less. But in imitation of the genius and leader of 
 their generation, all the men who wished to be some- 
 body started to shave clean. Knowledge of the razor 
 first became common in Greece because Alexander the 
 Great happened to be congenitally beardless! 
 
 As a monarch, Alexander was compelled to 
 espouse a woman. But he spent nearly all his married 
 life absent from his legal spouse, and was incapable of 
 procreation. All the evidence is that his real soul- 
 mate was a young warrior of his entourage. The two 
 were inseparable. His strange affection for other 
 
30 Alexander the Great. 
 
 young men of his entourage is remarked by contem- 
 poraries. He bewailed the death of favorites in battle 
 as only a wife can mourn a husband. 
 
 Androgynes, because they possess the feminine 
 psyche in greater or less degree, are generally very 
 much opposed to war. But it is possible for a less 
 extreme androgyne — of the psychic hermaphrodite 
 type — to be a great general when the leadership of 
 armies is thrust upon him. Genius occurs far oftener 
 in connection with androgynism than with full-fledged 
 masculinity. The rare keenness of mind of an andro- 
 gyne like Alexander would enable him to plan success- 
 ful campaigns. But his feminine cowardice would 
 always keep him far from the battle-front, where there 
 was no danger of a hair of his head ever being touched. 
 And that is what happened with Alexander. Above 
 all things else, he was a sybarite. 
 
 Androgynes, though never mixing in a fight them- 
 selves, are particularly attracted toward the war-loving 
 "hero." Much more than half of my own associates 
 during my female-impersonation sprees belonged to 
 a profession whose object was to kill their fellow man. 
 For almost twenty years of my "youngmanhood," I 
 was an habitue of barracks, etc., and a worshipper of 
 swords and rifles, although I would have been horrified 
 if required to take them into my own hands. I have 
 known other androgynes whose female-impersonation 
 sprees were staged before professional common sold- 
 iers. A young androgyne acquaintance actually en- 
 listed in the hospital corps in the war with Germany 
 because he wished to be surrounded continually with 
 warriors — the type of manhood which androgynes in 
 general most servilely worship. Walt Whitman is 
 
Julius Csesar. 
 
 31 
 
 celebrated for his work among- the wounded in Amer- 
 ica's War of the Rebellion. I read in a medical jour- 
 nal that during the World War, a problem with the 
 Italian army heads was to debar androgynes, who were 
 said to demoralize the army because of their cowardice 
 and seductive influence on their sexually full-fledged 
 comrades. I heard of an androgyne who received a 
 dishonorable discharge from the American conscript 
 army because wrongly judged to be the incarnation of 
 deepdyed moral depravity. 
 
 Perhaps the reason why Alexander and the next 
 mild androgyne to be described were two out of the 
 three greatest generals and conquerors of history was 
 their craze to pass practically all their adult lives sur- 
 rounded by warriors ! 
 
 Alexander the Great 
 
 (Ancient Coin J 
 
 Julius Caasar 
 
 (Bust in Louvre) 
 
 Julius Caesar has been adjudged by sexologists 
 an androgyne of the mild type. He married, as social 
 custom demanded of aristocratic Romans, but spent 
 nearly all his wedded life absent from his legal spouse. 
 His offspring is said to have consisted only of a single 
 daughter. History says he had a son by Cleopatra. 
 But this is doubtful because that queen was every 
 
32 Michelangelo. 
 
 man's wife. But even if Caesar had offspring, he 
 would merely be proved a psychic hermaphrodite. 
 
 Caesar was always clean-shaven, if not naturally 
 beardless. He even had his body depilated — as is 
 customary to-day with "fairies." Like the latter also, 
 he was, in dress, notoriously fussy and feminine — in 
 order to prove attractive to his lieutenants. He was 
 an instinctive female-impersonator. His entourage 
 were accustomed to refer to him as "the queen." Of 
 all historic characters, Caesar excels in respect to the 
 sensational stories of homosexual excesses found in 
 contemporary authors still extant. 
 
 Caesar was a great conqueror merely because cir- 
 cumstances, largely beyond his control, placed him at 
 the head of an army. As in the case of Alexander, 
 Caesar's genius enabled him to plan successful cam- 
 paigns. Others, however, had to expose life and limb, 
 while he kept himself safe in the rear passing his days 
 and nights as an extreme voluptuary. 
 
 Michelangelo, with the renaissance of civiliza- 
 tion after the Dark Ages, heads the list of the mildly 
 androgynous. He never married or was known to have 
 a mistress. He left behind many hitherto unpublished 
 homosexual sonnets of such merit that his nephew- 
 executor gave them to the world after radical expurga- 
 tion. Angelo's statues and paintings are pre-eminent 
 in their consummate, although sensual, outlines of the 
 nude adult male, the principal subject of his art. His 
 statues of the nude youthful Bacchus, Cupid, and 
 David of his middle twenties point the direction of his 
 sexuality . Before thirty he also produced the picture, 
 "The Battle of Cascina," 288 square feet crowded with 
 
Raphael. 
 
 33 
 
 nude male figures. His favorite Greek sculpture was 
 a statue of Hercules. 
 
 Raphael was an ultra-androgyne. He was al- 
 ways beardless (probably natural) and boylike in ap- 
 pearance. Instead of choosing a Roman mademoiselle 
 to be mistress of his mansion in the then most aris- 
 tocratic residence district of the world, he took two 
 young men to live with him as "sons", — a common 
 practice with well-to-do twentieth century androgynes. 
 
 Raphael, the Most Gifted Ultra-Androgyne the World 
 Has Known 
 
 The Shakespeare-Author was an androgyne. 
 The proof lies in the numerous homosexual passages 
 of his sonnets. The authorship of the Shakespeare 
 
34 The Shakespeare- Author. 
 
 literature is still undetermined after close to three 
 hundred publications on this question. If Providence 
 grants me time, I will finally prove beyond the shadow 
 of a doubt, by the homosexual argument original with 
 myself, that Francis Bacon was the Shakespeare- 
 author. I give below an outline of my proposed 
 thesis. 
 
 The young actor, Shakespeare, was a tremendous- 
 ly virile male, but estranged from his wife and living 
 apart during most of his married life. Bacon was 
 an androgyne several years older than Shakespeare. 
 He married only in middle life and solely for 
 money. He was a great statesman, but sorely in need 
 of money to meet his extravagant tastes. Apparently 
 he was incapable of procreation. Both men lived in 
 London, and were at least acquaintances, during the 
 dozen years which saw the creation of the Shakespeare 
 literature. 
 
 Bacon was the foremost scholar and one of the 
 foremost statesmen of his generation. He and the 
 Shakespeare-author are recognized to-day as two out 
 of the three greatest intellects which have ever blos- 
 somed forth in England — even by those who deny the 
 identity of the two, and hand the palm of Shakespeare- 
 author to the obscure actor, Shakespeare. 
 
 Numerous literateurs believe that evidence exists 
 that the incomparable Bacon's fad was writing plays, 
 the theatre in his day being comparatively a new craze 
 (that is, for modern times) — as are the "movies" in 
 the first quarter of the twentieth century. It would 
 then have been regarded as incongruous for the dig- 
 nified statesman, Bacon, to write plays as for an ex- 
 president of the United States to-day to write see- 
 
The Shakespeare Problem. 35 
 
 narios for the "movies." Through covering his 
 authorship, Bacon was spared the jests of his upper- 
 crust entourage. 
 
 Whatever credit, too, the plays had, Bacon would 
 wish his adored soul-mate to reap — just as the present 
 writer has sacrificed his own interests fundamentally 
 that his soul-mate might be benefited. But if Bacon 
 had thought the Shakespeare literature would survive 
 his own generation, he would doubtless, on his death- 
 bed, have confessed himself its author. But even for 
 many years after his death, everybody considered it 
 would be forgotten by man as soon as the shredded 
 leaves of the first printing were thrown into the fire 
 place. 
 
 Another reason why Bacon would never confess 
 his authorship is that in his age the law condemned to 
 burial alive any one guilty of such homosexual sen- 
 timents as he was constrained, by passion, to express 
 in the "Shakespeare" sonnets. 
 
 Francis Bacon published extensively under his 
 own name. He published extensively — as a large body 
 of literateurs believe — under the name of "William 
 Shakespeare." Just as the present writer has quite 
 a number of publications under his legal name, and a 
 number under the name "Ralph Werther — Jennie 
 June." And no one suspects the identity of the two 
 present-day authors. 
 
 The actual Shakespeare — behind whose skirts 
 Bacon hid — was, down to his death, only an obscure 
 actor, not known personally to any writer of his own 
 generation except (by supposition) Bacon. The actor 
 Shakespeare has achieved immortality through having 
 been Bacon's soul-mate. 
 
36 Walt Whitman. 
 
 Walt Whitman stands foremost among Amer- 
 ican androgynes. But he was of the mild type. 
 Many passages of Leaves of Grass and Drumtaps ex- 
 ist as proof. He never married, although closely pur- 
 sued by even wealthy women desiring him as husband. 
 In middle age he spent his hours for recreation in the 
 society of adolescents — as I was informed by Whit- 
 man's so-called "adopted son". That is, he courted 
 them, as a normal man courts a woman. Chance 
 made me intimate with the "adopted son" in his seven- 
 ties. All three of us happened to belong to New York 
 City. 
 * * * * * * * * * * 
 
 Surely we androgynes, who for two thousand 
 years have been despised, hunted down, and crushed 
 under the heel of normal men because they have mis- 
 understood biblical condemnations of homosexuality, 
 have no reason to be ashamed of our heritage. 
 America's foremost poet; the world's greatest sculptor 
 subsequently to Athens' golden age; the two greatest 
 ethicists and two out of the three greatest intellects of 
 ancient Greece and Rome; two out of the three great- 
 est conquerors of history; the greatest painter of all 
 ages; and — to cap the climax — the greatest intellect 
 that the English-speaking world ever produced and the 
 greatest literary genius of all time (these two distinc- 
 tions united in Francis Bacon)— ALL WERE ANDRO- 
 GYNES. 1 
 
 And to you full-fledged males I say: "What God 
 hath cleansed [through endowment with sublime tal- 
 ents] call not ye 'Unclean !' " 
 
 1 For twenty-five years, the author has combed the medical 
 press for information on androgynism. This chapter is the 
 
Are Androgynes Super-men? 37 
 
 fruit. I made no notes, never expecting to publish the results. 
 At the present writing, I lack the necessary month for research 
 to the end of making a complete list of my sources. For So- 
 crates, see Plato's Symposium and Phsedo, Xenophon's Sympo- 
 sium, and Haller's Die Rede des Sokrates in Platon's Symposium. 
 For Plato, see his Dialogues, particularly the Symposium; 
 Grote's Plato; Ellis's Sexual Inversion, page 229; The Sexuality 
 of Plato in Journal of Urology and Sexology, 1916, page 201. 
 For Caesar, see Dr. Wm. Lee Howard's Pederasty vs. Prostitu- 
 tion in Journal of the American Medical Association, May 15, 
 1897, and Suetonius' Lives of the Csesars, written about A. D. 
 120. The latter work is a revelation of the pederasty with 
 which the best Roman society was honeycombed. I believe con- 
 ditions are about the same to-day in all civilizations above 
 the barbarous, although in Christian nations one has not been 
 permitted to publish the facts. They are really not horrible, 
 nor portentous of ruin for society; merely imagined to be so. 
 They are not really conducive to the detriment of society, and 
 have existed practically as now throughout history. It is all 
 because Nature has created the phenomenon of androgynism, 
 really beneficent to society, but sorely misjudged by writers 
 grossly ignorant of the phenomenon. Its final investigation in 
 the twentieth century can do no hurt; only a world of good. 
 
 For Michelangelo, see his Sonnets and his biography by J. 
 A. Symonds. For the Shakespeare-Author, see his Sonnets and 
 Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Mr. W. H., published in Black- 
 wood's in 1889, as well as that same article expanded in a mono- 
 graph published by Mitchell Kennerly in 1921. For Whitman, 
 see his Leaves of Grass and Drumtaps. 
 
 Mrs. Havelock Ellis, in her New Horizons in Love and Life, 
 says: "Inversion [sexual] and genius have a sort of affinity. 
 They certainly both tend to belong to the neurotic group." [R. 
 W's comment: As a rule both androgynes and gynanders, but 
 particularly the former, are bundles of nerves.] 
 
 The valuable popular exposition of the philosophy of sex, 
 Edward Carpenter's Love's Coming-of-Age (published by Boni 
 and Liveright) did not come to my attention until after THE 
 FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS was written. The following are 
 excerpts from the chapter, The Intermediate Sex, the bracketed 
 words being my own: Page 124: "Charles G. Leland ("Hans 
 Breitmann") in his book, The Alternate Sex (1904), insists 
 much on the frequent combination of the characteristics of both 
 sexes in remarkable men and women, and has a chapter on "The 
 Female Mind in Man," and another on "The Male Intellect in 
 Woman." [I once read the statement in a medical journal, name 
 not recalled: "Homosexualists are particularly common among 
 authors."] 
 
 Page 139: "The instinctive artistic nature of the male of 
 this class [urnings or androgynes], his sensitive spirit, his 
 
38 Androgynes' Angelic Disposition. 
 
 wavelike emotional temperament, combined with hardihood of 
 intellect and body.... may be said to give them. .. .through 
 their double nature, command of life in all its phases, and a 
 certain freemasonry of the secrets of the two sexes which may 
 well favor their function as reconcilers [of the full-fledged males 
 with the full-fledged females] and interpreters [of human na- 
 ture, particularly from the standpoint of sex]. Certainly it is 
 remarkable that some of the world's greatest leaders and ar- 
 tists have been dowered either wholly or in part with the Uran- 
 ian temperament [that is, either ultra-androgynes or ultra- 
 gynanders or else psychic hermaphrodites] — as in the cases of 
 Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Alexander the Great, 
 Julius Caesar, or, among women, Christine of Sweden, Sappho 
 the poetess, and others." 
 
 It is noteworthy that tremendously virile males — who alone, 
 as a rule, have been intimate with the extreme type of andro- 
 gyne — have named him "fairie" in English-speaking countries 
 and "petit-jesus" (Little Jesus) in France, largely because of 
 his having, innate, the disposition of an angel; while the most 
 common scientific term for androgynes in general has been 
 "urning", from Greek ouranos, meaning "heavenly being." 
 The originator of the term "urning", however, was himself a 
 bisexual, K. H. Ulrichs, an Austrian, the originator, about 1880, 
 of the scientific study of sexual intermediates, and author of 
 several published papers on the theme. 
 
 A lesser historic character than those listed in my text, 
 Lord Cornbury, cousin of Queen Anne and colonial governor of 
 New York, had the fad of attiring himself in feminine finery 
 for a stroll on the capital city's principal promenade. One of 
 the most prominent judges (now deceased) of the Atlantic coast 
 was declared to me, by a citizen of his own town, to be a psychic 
 hermaphrodite. An official once high up in the government at 
 Washington was declared to me, by a citizen of his native place, 
 to be an androgyne. One of the greatest factors in world poli- 
 tics to-day is merely a grown-up infant and an androgyne, 
 though at the same time a genius. 
 
The Third Sex. 39 
 
 IV. Man Is a Passional, Rather Than a Rational, 
 Being. 
 
 Twentieth-century psychologists are coming 
 around to the view that even the leaders of thought are 
 governed by instinct and mores rather than reason. 
 Even for intellectuals, truth is what is intuitive or 
 what satisfies their prejudices and instincts. Still in 
 the twentieth century, the leaders of thought bow 
 down before intellectual idols, although other than 
 those overthrown by Francis Bacon. Still to-day — as 
 in the generation of Roger Bacon (13th century) — 
 conservatives yearn to imprison, or even burn at the 
 stake, those in whom a purer reason than their own 
 operates 
 
 My own is thus a Herculean task : To be an in- 
 tellectual iconoclast. To break down the last remnant 
 of cultured man's savage, criminal instincts and 
 mores. But, like Roger Bacon, I may comfort myself 
 with the thought that my views are centuries in ad- 
 vance of my time ; but, like him, I am therefore bitterly 
 persecuted. 1 
 
 1A confidant who read these paragraphs commented in 
 substance: "'Physician, heal thyself!' Your book shows that 
 you yourself are governed by instinct and prejudice. 'Those 
 that live in glass houses should not throw stones.' Therefore 
 omit these paragraphs." 
 
 If I am governed by instinct and prejudice, I am conscious 
 of being ruled only by reason. Perhaps those who advocate the 
 suppression of intermediates without investigation equally feel 
 they are governed by pure reason. Granted that both they and 
 myself are ruled by instinct and prejudice and that it is impos- 
 sible for mankind to exercise pure reason, nevertheless inter- 
 
40 Prudery Triumphant. 
 
 "Away with any one who attempts to bring out 
 the truth about sex !" cry the conservatives. "Crucify 
 him! Crucify him! Sex is a theme too disgusting 
 for discussion!" 
 
 In the university I took an extended course of lec- 
 tures on physiology. But not a word was said about 
 sex. The professor would not have thus befouled 
 his mouth, nor corrupted the morals of his students. 
 Martin's Human Body, the standard text-book of the 
 time, had to be published in two editions: (1) That 
 which treated of human sexuality as viewed in the 
 Dark Ages, and (2) that which imagined the genus 
 homo to be asexual. 
 
 One presumed male out of every three hundred 
 belongs to the third sex, strictly speaking. That is, 
 the ultra-androgynes — the pseudo-men who possess 
 only undersized and non-functional male pudenda, 
 whose body otherwise tends toward feminesqueness, 
 and whose psyche, predilections, tastes, gestures, and 
 postures remind one of a female. 
 
 The third sex is a commonplace topic in the 
 Underworld, which comprises about one-tenth the pop- 
 ulation of "Christian" lands. - The Underworlders, 
 however, generally fail to understand the cause of the 
 effeminacy. The nine-tenths of the unlearned who 
 have never entered a more immoral place than a 
 "movie" theatre are almost entirely ignorant of the 
 third sex. What hazy ideas they have are criminally 
 incorrect. And except for a handful of sexologists, 
 
 mediates should finally have their day in court. They number 
 700,000 in continental United States alone, including some of 
 the brightest minds and most useful members of society. 
 
Benighted Leaders of Thought. 41 
 
 the learned still cling to views handed down from the 
 Dark Ages. 
 
 In the seventeenth century, when a cyclone demol- 
 ished a hamlet or an epidemic broke out, a council of 
 physicians, lawyers, and clergymen was called to de- 
 termine which semi-bearded old hag had wished the 
 catastrophe upon the community. After prayer for 
 divine guidance and an exhortation by a parson that 
 the Bible taught that witches ought to be ferreted out, 
 the high-brows would seek to determine who of the 
 several bags of bone known to all of them presented 
 the most loathsome appearance, and who should there- 
 fore be burned at the stake as the tvitch responsible for 
 the catastrophe — as the necessary human sacrifice 
 to appease the anger of the Unseen Powers. For even 
 down to the twentieth century there survives in 
 Christendom the pagan superstition of the necessity 
 of a human sacrifice now and then. 
 
 But in the twentieth century, leaders of thought 
 have evolved from the belief in witchcraft. They 
 must look elsewhere than to semi-bearded hags for 
 their sacrificial victims on whom to load the sins of 
 mankind, and the blame for the decline and fall of 
 nations. Since, next to hags, they consider sexual 
 cripples as the most loathsome of humans, they make 
 the latter the scape-goats of present-day society. 
 While they no longer burn them at the stake or bury 
 them alive (as provided in old European law) they are 
 permitted by twentieth century statutes to imprison 
 inoffensive androgynes for twenty years. And these 
 archaic statutes are still frequently enforced. Only a 
 few months ago I read of a Boston clergyman who was 
 sentenced to prison on the testimony of a young ex- 
 
42 Banishment of Androgynes. 
 
 soldier. But to-day these statutes serve chiefly as 
 ground for extensive blackmail of Nature's step-child- 
 ren, hardly one of whom, if belonging to the middle or 
 upper class, but has had to pay out considerable sums, 
 occasionally running into the thousands. 
 
 Instead of imprisonment, public opinion has gen- 
 erally substituted banishment of the disclosed andro- 
 gyne forever from all he loves. 
 
 During the few months of composing this book, 
 the New York papers have told of the abrupt flight to 
 parts unknown of three intellectual leaders in their 
 communities, two just over the city line and the third 
 within a hundred miles. They had to flee, not because 
 they had done the least real harm (all three were 
 pastors of churches) but because of the mediaeval 
 ignorance and bitter hatred that their communities 
 immediately manifested toward a "man" (reputedly) 
 all of a sudden disclosed to be a "monster" (though in 
 reality a harmless and pitiable sexual cripple). The 
 populace, ignorant that he had probably practiced a 
 thousand times more self-denial than any one of them- 
 selves, but had at last been able to withstand Nature's 
 demands no longer, chased him out of his community 
 for good and all with the feeling that he was the lowest 
 scoundrel that ever contaminated it. 
 
 I admit that these unfortunates did show bad judg- 
 ment in remaining in the ministry when they knew 
 they were afflicted with a powerful instinct abhorred by 
 the sexually full-fledged, and they showed the worst 
 kind of judgment in having recourse to boys under 
 puberty. But they were in a tight place, and besides 
 felt that they were doing no one any harm. For the 
 androgyne generally comes at last to the view that 
 
Most Androgynes Ultra-Religious. 43 
 
 what Nature demands can be no sin and, if properly 
 fulfilled, no transgression against any human. 
 
 The newspaper devotee runs across a similar item 
 every once in a while, and nearly always the "monster" 
 is a clergyman or a teacher. But the abhorred pen- 
 chant (fellatio) is, of course, not peculiar to these 
 professions. Simply their high ethical standing, and 
 the common fancy that they should therefore be proof 
 against what is incorrectly regarded as the worst of 
 vices, attract greater attention, and give news value to 
 the occasional disclosures. 
 
 But it is probable that among the occupations, 
 those two, together with all having to do with art of 
 any kind, have the largest proportions of androgynes. 
 As a rule, male bisexuals are goody-goody boys who 
 develop into ultra-religious adolescents. They are 
 enthusiastic to better the race morally and spiritually. 
 The robes commonly worn by clergymen are also a 
 powerful drawing card, since androgynes yearn for 
 apparel that conceals that they are bipeds. Thus 
 quite a number who were born intellectual and whose 
 sexual ardor, during adolescence, is comparatively 
 weak, gravitate into the two professions standing 
 highest ethically and religiously. When making his 
 choice, the adolescent is filled with religious fervor and 
 possessed of a strong determination to crucify his 
 "homosexual" tendencies. The androgyne already 
 yielding would never put on "the cloth," although he 
 would go into pedagogy. But the puritan-minded 
 regards these tendencies as his "besetting sin" and 
 fights them for years in the strenuous manner de- 
 scribed in my own Autobiography of an Androgyne. 
 Throughout his teens, and perhaps even his twenties, 
 
44 Abstinence Induces Melancholia. 
 
 he never expects to be overmastered. But later in 
 life many a one of these sexual cripples who have put 
 on "the cloth" disgrace it notwithstanding his prior 
 unparalleled mental struggles against Nature's be- 
 hests. 
 
 Or if coming out victor in the lifelong struggle, 
 the pitiable woman-man lives down to death under 
 the obsession (due to misinterpreted biblical texts) 
 that the gratification of his unusual instinct is the 
 most heinous of sins, and spends all his days, in which 
 God meant that he should rejoice, in mourning over his 
 sexual ardor (for which he does not realize he is ir- 
 responsible), in crucifying his body continuously, with 
 its affections and lusts (as commanded by the anaph- 
 rodite, St. Paul), and is thereby, throughout adult 
 life, en the borderline of insanity. I have heard 
 sermons from such clergymen and was moved to pity 
 as they were shedding tears in the pulpit and render- 
 ing themselves unpopular, both with their fellow 
 preachers who are sexually full-fledged and with the 
 laity, because their aspect was always that of tragedy. 
 I advise that all such melancholiacs immediately ask 
 that they be honorably deposed from the ministry. 
 As a result their lives would be happy and satisfying. 
 
 The vast majority of preachers are manly. I 
 have 3. higher respect for that profession than for any 
 other. If it had not been for my androgynism, I 
 would have myself entered it. It would be well for the 
 Church authorities to question, as to their sexuality, 
 all candidates for beginning a theological course, and 
 in the kindest manner advise adolescents in the least 
 bisexual to choose some other profession because of 
 the public's misunderstanding of this phenomenon. 
 
Why Androgynes Are Hated. 45 
 
 Sexual conduct is not primarily a voluntary matter or 
 an ethical question, but rooted in anatomy, physiology, 
 and psychology. The androgyne who yearns to 
 preach the Gospel can do so through the printed word. 
 Because of St. Paul's sex teaching (that of an anaph- 
 rodite) the profession of "the cloth" is rightly open 
 only to anaphrodites and the mildly virile. The more 
 virile are likewise excluded because it is next to im- 
 possible for them to abstain from adultery. 
 
 Why are androgynes so hated? Primarily be- 
 cause the leaders of thought have always identified 
 them with the men of ancient Sodom (mistakenly, 
 because the Sodomites were full-fledged males) and 
 historians have mistakenly (because they never met 
 androgynes personally and were taught in their boy- 
 hood to hate them with all their heart, soul, mind, and 
 strength) laid upon them all the blame for the decline 
 and fall of nations, and declared that therefore effem- 
 inacy or androgynism is a type of moral depravity to 
 be crushed mercilessly. Better that some thousands 
 of androgynes be deprived of life, liberty, and the 
 pursuit of happiness than that the general welfare of 
 the nation be imperilled ! Androgynes — they argue — 
 are unavoidably the scape-goats of the race. 
 
 I answer : In the first place, such imperilment is 
 only a figment of the imagination. This superstition 
 can be disposed of by merely asking to what extent 
 the welfare of humanity was imperiled by the sex 
 functioning of the arch-androgynes listed in chapter 
 III? In the second place, androgynism is not moral 
 depravity or degeneracy. I myself — an extreme type 
 of androgyne — spring from the most puritan stock. 
 I was brought up to consider that on Sunday, reading 
 
46 Androgynism Not Degeneracy. 
 
 anything but Christian doctrine or walking a hundred 
 feet for mere pleasure were heinous sins. In ad- 
 dition to springing from the most puritan stock, both 
 my paternal and maternal stock are of unusually 
 strong build. A paternal and also a maternal uncle 
 were professional athletes. A brother was the cham- 
 pion athlete of my native village. My stock and early 
 environment are indeed the last that any one would 
 pick out as likely to bring into the world a homosexual 
 or androgyne as a result of moral degradation. 1 My 
 androgynism has, however, made me myself rather 
 lilliputian. With one exception, I grew up to be the 
 smallest man of my paternal and maternal families. 
 
 It is not necessary to crush androgynes in order 
 to guard against the spread of effeminacy. Effemina- 
 cy, in the sense of androgynism, does not spread by 
 example. It is entirely congenital. Only a physical 
 male born with quasi-feminine predilections would 
 adopt the role of a female after becoming adult. An 
 androgyne's predilections and practices are regarded 
 with such repugnance by all full-fledged males that 
 none would stoop to them unless constrained by in- 
 stinct. 
 
 Why imprison and murder the androgyne any 
 more than the deaf-mute? The former is no more 
 abnormal than the latter; no more degenerate; no 
 more depraved. It is unfortunate that the human 
 
 i My own case indicates that Nature creates androgynes 
 and gynanders as a brake on too rapid multiplication. Both 
 paternal and maternal stock have averaged eight children to a 
 marriage. It seems that Nature wishes to preserve to as many 
 of her children as possible the joys of courtship. Often, instead 
 of making cold anaphrodites or female icebergs out of the men 
 and women not needed to perpetuate the race, she brings into 
 the world androgynes or gynanders — as a rule, sterile. 
 
Not Cause of Decline of Nations. 47 
 
 race is handicapped with either of these defective 
 classes. But the androgyne deserves only pity, the 
 same as the deaf-mute. 
 
 Effeminacy in an entirely different sense, and a 
 kind that spreads rapidly through example, is the 
 actual cause of the decline and fall of nations; in the 
 sense of the weakening of the moral fibre of the males 
 of the upper crust or ruling class through their hav- 
 ing grown overfond of ease and pleasure and lost 
 their joy in industry and justifiable fighting. A neigh- 
 boring nation of superior moral fibre is quick to learn 
 of such effemination and subjugates the decadent one. 
 But these effeminates' fondness for the gentle sex has 
 in no way declined. Generally it has greatly augment- 
 ed. Witness the decline and fall of the Greek, Roman, 
 and Turkish empires. 
 
 Where has androgynism been more prevalent than 
 formerly among the American aborigines? Probably 
 because the tribes were constantly underfed. When- 
 ever a male arrived at puberty, the weapons of the 
 warrior and the cooking vessels of the squaw were 
 ceremoniously placed before him that he might choose 
 his future social status. A not inconsiderable number 
 of adolescents (because congenital androgynes) al- 
 ways chose the culinary utensils and passed the rest 
 of their lives as squaws, the hair of the beard being 
 plucked out as fast as it showed itself, and the costume 
 being that of the female sex. Surely savage tribes 
 continuously on the war-path can not be accused of 
 degenerative effeminacy ! 
 
 About one-third the soul-mates of androgynes 
 who have come under my observation have been vol- 
 untary common soldiers or blue- jackets. I am far 
 
48 Androgynism Nationally Healthful. 
 
 from being the only androgyne who has gravitated 
 toward the "supreme men" whose voluntary profes- 
 sion has as its aim the killing of their fellow man. 
 Androgynism appears to go hand in hand with militar- 
 ism rather than vice versa. Havelock Ellis says that 
 homosexuality is particularly common among the 
 Sikhs, the most military of the Hindustan races. 
 
 It is more likely that the emergence of andro- 
 gynism is a sign of national health. The ultra-brilliant 
 Age of Pericles surpassed all other periods in the 
 recognition and influence of androgynism, which pro- 
 motes art and general culture. The androgyne, being 
 a combination of man and woman in a single individu- 
 al, has a wider view of life than the full-fledged man 
 or woman. He possesses, in a measure, the mental 
 qualities peculiar to each sex. That is why the Shakes- 
 peare-Author knew both the masculine and the fem- 
 inine mind better than any other writer. Such duality 
 is the reason artistic genius crops out far more fre- 
 quently among androgynes than among the sexually 
 full-fledged. The amalgamated man-woman nature 
 gets nearest to sentiment and emotion — to the soul of 
 art. 1 
 
 Why do cultured androgynes carefully conceal 
 their quasi-feminine sexual predilections? Why did 
 Angelo not publish any of his homosexual sonnets? 
 Why did Raphael not proclaim on the housetops the 
 happenings in his house at night? Androgynes hide 
 their sexual predilections and practices, not because 
 of consciousness of personal degeneracy, but because 
 
 1 I wrote this paragraph, so much like that quoted (at close 
 of preceding chapter) from Carpenter's Love's Coming of Age, 
 before I had heard of the existence of the book named. 
 
Race Suicide. 49 
 
 grossly misunderstood by the sexually full-fledged. 
 By exception, Oscar Wilde was open and above board, 
 and was therefore shut up in prison. 
 
 Only bigoted pseudo-scientists have pronounced 
 androgynes degenerates. Only mediaeval medicine, 
 not modern medicine. Androgynism is merely an in- 
 stance of arrested development ; or possibly of atavism 
 — an attempt on the part of Nature to return to the 
 original hermaphrodism of man's early antecedents. 
 The androgyne who follows the dictates of Nature 
 is not a whit more degenerate morally than the full- 
 fledged man who marries. It is only the fallible mores 
 which make the full-Hedged think that a person with 
 apparently male pudenda who impersonates a female 
 is infinitely below themselves morally. Were Socrates, 
 Plato, Angelo, Raphael, and Francis Bacon monsters 
 of depravity? Ought the Shakespeare- Author to 
 have been buried alive by his hare-brained fellow citi- 
 zens before he had a chance to pen a line? 
 
 The chief charge against androgynes is that they 
 are guilty of "the awful crime of race suicide." But 
 it is the fault of Nature alone that the ultra-androgyne 
 is incapable of doing his part in the perpetuation of 
 the race. 
 
 The cultured androgyne, knowing his irresistible 
 instincts are harmless to his soul-mate, is unable to 
 discern in them any transgression against ethics or 
 against God. 
 
 But a very small proportion of adult androgynes 
 have been guilty of a lamentable transgression be- 
 cause finding themselves in a tight place : that is, re- 
 course to boys under puberty. The prudery of full- 
 fledged men has hitherto prohibited androgynes from 
 
50 Androgynes' One Offence. 
 
 scientific knowledge of themselves. Until thirty years 
 ago, American and British public opinion would not 
 tolerate the publication of the facts about androgynism 
 even for circulation among the medical profession. 
 Havelock Ellis's Sexual Inversion, the earliest pub- 
 lished book in the English language on androgynism, 
 was promptly suppressed by the British government 
 thirty years ago. I myself had to bend the knee for 
 eighteen years to medical publishers before my Auto- 
 biography of an Androgyne was fed into the print- 
 ing-press in 1918. 
 
 Thus, because full-fledged men have interdicted 
 to cultured androgynes the means of understanding 
 themselves and knowledge of how they ought to pass 
 their lives, some — particularly those who have 
 achieved places of honor, because androgynes of lower 
 rank do not need to be so crafty in hiding their ter- 
 rible secret from the heartless world — have ultimately 
 been revealed guilty of recourse to the immature (be- 
 cause they could not screw up their courage to dis- 
 close their abnormality to an older and wiser male) . 
 But on account of the tyranny of the full-fledged, 
 these erring androgynes merit mercy. Their offences 
 have probably not been at all harmful to the immature. 
 They are merely asserted to be so by men unable to 
 accept any scientific results except those inculcated 
 by mediaeval savants. But this one offence of andro- 
 gynes will be a thing of the past when they are 
 permitted recourse to books which explain the riddle 
 of their lives, and when full-fledged men read such 
 books in order that they may do justice to Nature's 
 step-children. 
 
 As already stated, ultra-androgynes, having a 
 
Androgynes Are Goody-Goodies. 51 
 
 woman's psyche, are goody-goodies. Indeed goody- 
 goodiness may be regarded as their most marked char- 
 acteristic. For this reason, in France, they are called 
 "little Jesuses" (petite jesus) notwithstanding that the 
 more extreme are public female-impersonators in re- 
 sorts of ill repute. Ultra-androgynes are incapable of 
 doing any real harm. If all the human race were as 
 harmless, this world would be a far better place in 
 which to live. 
 
 The cultured androgyne is a desirable citizen and 
 a desirable member of any circle. While ultra-andro- 
 gynism makes its victims physically weak — like a 
 woman — it has no deteriorating effect morally or men- 
 tally. The usual charge of gross immorality is merely 
 a relic of mediaeval bigotry. 
 
 It matters not, however, that androgynes are ab- 
 solutely innocuous practically and ethically. Do they 
 not offend the aesthetic sense of the majority of man- 
 kind? What better cause for grinding them under 
 one's heel? 
 
 And this bitter persecution that has been the lot 
 of some androgynes has rendered them misanthropes. 
 Not their androgynism per se. A mildly androgynous 
 acquaintance — an intellectual giant of the highest 
 moral character except for his irresponsible and in- 
 nocuous passive pederasty — is, as a result of society's 
 shutting him up in prison for the five years of his in- 
 tellectual prime, a chronic and bitter reviler of the 
 Church. Because zealous churchmen were responsible 
 for the wrecking of his life through their misunder- 
 standing of the biblical teaching on homosexuality. 
 
 But in general we androgynes, possessing the 
 long-suffering feminine psyche, are resigned to being 
 
52 God Will Avenge Androgynes. 
 
 ground to powder by the hypocritical world. It is 
 better to suffer than to inflict suffering. Though the 
 world despise and ostracise us, the All-Knowing is 
 still our refuge, and another life awaits us where con- 
 ditions will be more just. The bigoted and Pharisaical 
 judges and juries who have haled hundreds of innocent 
 androgynes off to prison should remember the Old 
 Testament doctrine: " 'Vengeance is mine!' saith Je- 
 hovah." Those who incarcerate the innocent in this 
 world will in the next have to serve time in the darkest 
 dungeons of a just God. 
 ********* 
 
 Note to Illustration Facing Page 53. 
 
 My father was a reversionary pure Alpine, but his broth- 
 ers were decidedly Nordic. My mother is a reversionary pure 
 Nordic, while roost of her brothers and sisters were predomi- 
 nantly Alpine. Evidences of Mediterranean blood in my pater- 
 nal or maternal stock are doubtful. I myself am predominantly 
 Alpine, particularly evident in my short stature and generally 
 brunette features. But the Nordic cross has given me a rather 
 ruddy complexion and "browned" my chevelure. My beard 
 hair is jet black, but always clean-shaven, if not eradicated. I 
 am of English, Scotch, Dutch, German, and French descent. 
 During adulthood, I have always considered the highest human 
 beauty to reside in adolescent Irish-Americans or Italian-Ameri- 
 cans of approximately pure Mediterranean stock. 
 
The "Fairie Boy" Ready to Set Out on Life's Journey 
 
 (See note on page 52.) 
 
faxfOfaaz 
 jJlofci the JVutfyor (Earns to J£e a Jfemab-^mpersutiaior 
 
 (Part Two summarizes my pre-nineteen life and 
 my physical and mental traits for those not reading 
 my Autobiography of an Androgyne. Particularly 
 for details of purely medical interest, the scientist is 
 referred to that work, since the present volume is de- 
 signed primarily for the general reader. Part Two, 
 however, presents many facts not in mind when I 
 wrote the earlier work over twenty years ago.) 
 
 I. Reveries Suggested by My Infancy. 
 
 Connecticut, famous for its wooden nutmegs and 
 other freak products, gave to the world, in 1874, one 
 of its half-dozen most widely known girl-boys. 
 
 My mother has said that I was the greatest cry- 
 baby of her eleven children. I have really never out- 
 grown this characteristic. Still in my late forties, I 
 occasionally weep bitterly for a whole hour. 
 
 Up to my eighth birthday, timidity made me re- 
 luctant to leave my mother's side to play with other 
 children. Sticking very close to "mother" as a child, 
 and extraordinary devotion to her when adult are 
 common earmarks of androgynism. I have known of 
 no other reputed male so devoted to his mother, even 
 down to his late forties, as I. My mother is still, by 
 
 [53] 
 
54 My Life-Long Soulmate (in Dreamland). 
 
 a kind Providence, spared to me. I frequently weep 
 bitterly at the thought of her dying and can not 
 imagine living when she is in the grave. I knew an 
 androgyne who, in his sixties, died from grief a few 
 days after the death of his mother around ninety. 
 
 In my early childhood, only one other person 
 attracted me in a comparable fashion — a neighbor's 
 burly boy, F'ank, five years older than myself. All 
 my life I have seen him at least several times a year, 
 since he has remained a close friend down to the time 
 when we both count about half-a-century of life. His 
 influence is still strong, although sexual relations 
 ceased when I was seven. He was one of the most 
 amorous of boys. From my third to seventh year, he 
 sought me several times a week. Perhaps he also em- 
 braced every chance for heterosexual relations — 
 common among the children under twelve in the "best 
 set" of the village, among whom I was privileged to 
 be brought up. And yet all these contaminated young- 
 sters — excepting myself — turned out fairly virtuous 
 adults. The ultra-amorous and active pederast F'ank 
 became, when adult, exclusively heterosexual and quite 
 promiscuous, being of the tremendously virile type. 
 But around thirty, he settled down into absolute mon- 
 ogamy. He, however, never had a child. At past 
 fifty, he stands at perfection in health, strength, and 
 morality. 
 
 I say they "turned out"! That is, so far as I 
 ever heard. But they would all have said of me that I 
 passed through my adult life a cold anaphrodite ! One 
 can never know! Some might secretly have been ad- 
 dicted to venery as much as I. But they betrayed no 
 external sign. Neither have I. 
 
Most Sheltered Two "Went to the Bad." 55 
 
 But while all those who indulged in "nastiness" 
 before reaching their teens grew up, so far as I was 
 able to observe, into men and women above reproach, 
 two of "my set" — those who were "kids" at the same 
 time within a radius of five hundred feet of my own 
 paternal roof, the several homosexualist schoolmates 
 elsewhere described having lived outside that radius — 
 the two that had been most carefully brought up and 
 shielded by their mother from corruption by other 
 children, almost the only two that were sexually un- 
 blemished as children, "went to the bad" immediately 
 on arrival at puberty. They were brother and sister 
 — the only children of a wealthy, pious couple. The 
 brother became a chronic dypsomaniac and roue. The 
 sister, a beautiful and brilliant girl who had enjoyed a 
 college education, died before thirty as a result of ex- 
 cesses in her chosen profession of fille de joie in New 
 York City. The mother died of a broken heart in her 
 early forties. The father, previously active in church 
 work, became despondent on seeing both his children 
 "go to the bad," took to drink, and died a sot. 
 
 Debauchery was born in these two children, for 
 they had never missed Bible school up to their middle 
 teens. They were unusually innocent prior to puberty. 
 But religious teaching failed to convince them. They 
 thought the "goody-goodies" were trying to rob them 
 of the pleasures of life through false representations. 
 I believe both could have been saved from shipwreck 
 of life if, at puberty, a book, scientific, not goody-goody, 
 could have been put into their hands, demonstrating 
 that alcoholic and venereal excesses bring on ruin and 
 often early death. Children inclined to dissipation on 
 arrival at puberty are far more likely to heed the pro- 
 
56 Inherited Lechery. 
 
 nouncements of a physician than of a Bible school 
 teacher. 
 
 * # * £ ♦ ♦ ♦ 
 
 In that same immediate puritan circle in my child- 
 hood's village, I have lately observed a similar case in 
 the next generation. I have known well a certain 
 gentleman of my own age since we were boys together. 
 He is of the tremendously virile type and sowed his 
 wild oats as hardly another young blood in the village. 
 But in his middle twenties he was "soundly converted" 
 in a puritan church (to which I myself belonged) and 
 married one of its purest daughters. In his subse- 
 quent life, he attained rare success financially and 
 socially. He has had only two children — both girls 
 around twenty years of age at the date of writing. I 
 know the family intimately. I have direct infor- 
 mation that both girls are "fast going to the bad" (not- 
 withstanding they have always been under only pur- 
 itan influences) and that the father has "backslidden," 
 evidently being no longer able to restrain his de facto 
 polygamous instincts. The purest of wives is heart- 
 broken and on the borderline of insanity. 
 
 Every one says the girls and their father are wil- 
 fully depraved and their puritan community has al- 
 ready begun to treat them as outcasts. / say the girls 
 inherited their craze for venery from their father, in 
 whom likewise it was inborn. He is a noble man in 
 every other respect. All three are largely irrespon- 
 sible. They are, by birth, not fitted for the puritan 
 society in which they were brought up. Under present 
 social ideas and usages, the only outlet for the girls is 
 prostitution and the consequent early loss of health 
 soon terminating in death. But their only fault is 
 
Present Social Rules Inadequate. 57 
 
 nymphomania. If society had some way by which it 
 could bring about the satisfaction of these needs of 
 these cultured girls, the latter could be saved from the 
 shipwreck of life and be useful members of their 
 community. In my own life I have proved that 
 Christian conversion and absorption in the teachings 
 of the Bible can not save one from innate nympho- 
 mania. I could suggest a means of salvation for these 
 girls, but dare not. If only the leaders of thought did 
 not prescribe an identic sex life for every daughter of 
 Eve, although Nature has created them with such di- 
 versity along these lines! If only the leaders of 
 thought permitted real sexual problems (as well as 
 namby-pamby) to be investigated, as all other phe- 
 nomena are searched out to the very bottom ! If only 
 the leaders of thought permitted the truth to be told 
 about sex instead of continuing to propagate the hy- 
 pocrisies and fabrications regnant down from the 
 
 Dark Ages ! 
 
 ******* 
 
 I have read statements of puritans of the dreadful 
 results that will follow the common sex relations of 
 children under twelve in city tenements. I have spent 
 a large part of my life in rural districts as well as in 
 great cities. My observations are that conditions are 
 the same among children of both types of environment. 
 Numerous youngsters receive their sex initiation be- 
 fore twelve. But, unless carried to excess, it does not 
 seem to have any bad influence, particularly after they 
 become adults. The probability is that the same 
 practice has ruled among small children for thousands 
 of years. It is Nature. 
 
 And the context moves me to remark: It turned 
 
58 Providence's Favoritism Toward Author. 
 
 out that of my several hundred schoolmates (prior to 
 the university) I achieved in adult life the highest 
 success. Not as a business man or money-maker, in 
 which line I did not excel. Not in art or politics. 
 But in the following fields, both individually and com- 
 bined: Intellectual and general cultural development; 
 enjoyment of (but not adeptness in) all species of art; 
 breadth and depth of life and knowledge of human 
 nature; enjoyment of the society of my fellow humans, 
 particularly sexual opposites; and, last but not least, 
 fame, or, as some would prefer to have me say, noto- 
 riety. For I feel that I, as an extreme type of the 
 bisexual, am doomed to live in the minds of savants for 
 scores of years after every one of my hundreds of 
 schoolmates, and my other hundreds of university 
 associates, are eternally forgotten. 
 
 [Note Added in Galley: I omitted to mention that I have 
 also far excelled in suffering inflicted by man and in sorrow — 
 which two items together have about counterbalanced the ad- 
 vantages enumerated..] 
 
 But I have achieved this last element (terrestrial 
 immortality) of the highest success in life denied to 
 all my wide circles of childhood and adolescence 
 through my "going to the bad" — as the saying is. But 
 though that was the fate marked out for me by the 
 Architect of the Universe, I was actually able to re- 
 strain my "evil" propensities so as not to make ship- 
 wreck of life. My girl-boy intimate described in the 
 early part of the second chapter following did make, 
 decidedly, shipwreck of his life, as have many other 
 girl-boys. My salvation lay in practicing relatively 1 
 
 1 For me it was extreme temperance, considering my 
 natural sexual ardor. For most people it would have been gross 
 intemperance. Extreme temperance might be defined as the 
 
Temperance the Only Salvation. 59 
 
 extreme temperance in the indulgence of the sexual 
 propensities except during my Bowery period de- 
 scribed in my Autobiography of an Androgyne and 
 Riddle of the Underworld. Extreme temperance 
 in indulgence of any fleshly appetite is, for all human- 
 ity, the sole means of salvation from the shipwreck of 
 earthly life. Overindulgence of any appetite defeats 
 its own end. 
 
 Thus while nearly all other girl-boys are doomed 
 to be forgotten by mankind a few years after their 
 bodies return "dust to dust," I myself am — I feel — des- 
 tined to live in the memory of savants primarily be- 
 cause of my extensive self-restraint, and secondarily 
 because of my excelling the other girl-boys in innate 
 brain-power. 
 
 It was F'ank who initiated me, at two, in the 
 mysteries which gullible parents think children do not 
 learn before puberty. But down to twelve, I consid- 
 ered all species of sex relations as the monopoly of 
 naughty children. All adults had of course outgrown 
 such depths of nastiness. 
 
 Down to my present age of close to half-a-cen- 
 tury, F'ank has been the hero in half my many sexual 
 dreams. After I reached seven, we ceased to be con- 
 fidential. I therefore never confessed to him that his 
 influence prior to my seventh year almost wrecked my 
 adult life — probably consigning me to an irresponsible, 
 intensive fairie career — and a thousand times made me 
 wish, because a slave to fellatio, that I were dead. 
 For I firmly believe that girl-boys, if not repeatedly 
 
 denial of six-sevenths of one's strong fleshly desires. That is 
 what it was with me. Professional fairies commonly indulge 
 more than ten times as often per year as I did. But as a result, 
 they go early to the grave. 
 
60 Keep Tots Sexually Clean. 
 
 seduced before puberty, will, as adults, have only 
 weak and controllable desires for the sexual function- 
 ing ordained by Nature for their type. While they are 
 commonly fellators or else pathics cong enitally , only 
 oft repeated seduction in early childhood makes them, 
 after puberty, irresponsible psychic nymphomaniacs 
 who recruit the ranks of fairies. But for those repeat- 
 edly seduced in early childhood, the penchant is truly 
 irresistible in adulthood and would be followed re- 
 gardless of all legal penalties. Just as most men would 
 steal a loaf of bread if their only means of salvation 
 from death through hunger. 
 
 Not too often repeated homosexual acts on the 
 part of a small child, however, are not likely to make 
 him an adult pervert. An innate tendency is practi- 
 cally indispensable. Early experiences along innate 
 lines merely strengthen a congenital bias, just as the 
 author became an intensive adult fairie as a result — I 
 am inclined to believe — of my intense fairieship from 
 three to six. 
 
 While I believe sexual relations of children under 
 twelve when not often repeated will not render them 
 particularly lustful as adults, an intensive sex life of 
 a small child — as in my own case — is likely to render 
 him or her extremely intemperate sexually after puber- 
 ty. Mothers should therefore keep a watchful eye 
 over the whereabouts and associates of the "angel 
 child," and not allow it in secluded cosy nooks with 
 older children. A careful watch should be kept over 
 nurse-girls. Children under twelve, and even under 
 six, need chaperons almost as much as those just past 
 puberty. 
 
 Parents should take pains that the "angel child" 
 
Criminal Prudery. 61 
 
 regards them as confidants, sharers of its every secret. 
 If this had happened in my own case, I might have 
 been spared a world of woe after puberty. To pre- 
 serve the frankness of the "angel child," not even 
 a mild rebuke should ever be administered for its 
 sexual lapses; but kind persuasion alone, and care 
 that the child does not again come into exciting sur- 
 roundings. 
 
 My own parents and teachers never vouchsafed 
 the least sex knowledge. I once asked where babies 
 came from. Doctors found them in the street gutters 
 and brought them to people's houses. Instinct and 
 older boys were my only instructors. Parents, teach- 
 ers, but preferably the school physician, should begin 
 with children of six a clean initiation into these myster- 
 ies — absorbing even to youngsters of that tender age — 
 to replace the hitherto regnant nasty one wrought by 
 child lore handed down, from mouth to mouth, through 
 the centuries, and characterized by unprintable words, 
 in uttering, seeing, and hearing which numerous 
 children seem to take delight. 
 
 Or is the subject of sex irreformable and hope- 
 less? Is it really the crying shame of the human race? 
 
 From my third to seventh year, F'ank and I were 
 drawn toward one another. I yearned to recline in 
 his arms. "F'ank," I once said, "I'm not af'aid on 
 your lap. But I'm af'aid nearly always. I'm af'aid, 
 when I get as big as papa, hair '11 grow on my cheeks, 
 like on his. How could I ever use a horrible wazor, 
 like him ! I hope I'll die before I get big !" 
 
 I was destined to be a sort of pet with others of 
 the more stalwart boys. It was because I retained my 
 babyishness — like an idiot — at least down to the age 
 
62 A Wee Girl-Boy's Outlook on Life. 
 
 of seven, and was, besides, girlish. I commonly felt 
 myself a little girl and told playmates to call me Jen- 
 nie. They have remarked that I was "more girl than 
 boy." Adults, however, were blind to my bisexuality. 
 They ridiculed me for carrying a doll in my arms 
 when I took a walk ; etc. Because I was the only child 
 of my set thus violently crossed, I was the most un- 
 happy. Taunts sometimes drove me to throw myself 
 on the floor, bang my head, and exclaim: "I wish I 
 were dead !" 
 
 But, on the whole, my early childhood was happy. 
 With F'ank I would play "papa and mamma." He 
 would "go to business," while I took care of the dolls; 
 etc. I made and laundered their wardrobes. One day 
 a sudden shower surprised me. Gazing at the ill- 
 fated wash on the line, I sobbed: "Oh it yains! It 
 yains ! And my c'ose '11 get wet !" 
 
 The day of thoroughgoing disillusionment came 
 early in my seventh year. It was the style for boys to 
 wear skirts up to that age. How I loved them ! And 
 I never expected to clothe myself otherwise. Even 
 down to my middle forties, I have always felt more at 
 home in skirts. 
 
 Then I wasn't to be allowed to go through life as 
 a girl and a woman? I was up against the choice of 
 spending the rest of life in my bedroom, or drawing 
 on a pair of the utterly loathed breeches. At first it 
 was the same as if I had to go on the street in my 
 underclothes. I would dodge behind a tree when an 
 acquaintance hove in sight. How poignantly I missed 
 petticoats as a screen for my shameful nether limbs! 
 Not to mention the deprivation of the pleasure of feel- 
 ing them dangling about my knees. 
 
How I Came to Be a Female-Impersonator. 63 
 
 II. School Days. 
 
 First year: How terrible the aspect of the big 
 brick academy! How awe-inspiring the smell of the 
 newly varnished floor on the first day of my school 
 life! How my heart jumped to my throat whenever I 
 caught the cold, stern eye of the school-marm piercing 
 through my own little self! How bold and bad and 
 rough all the boys were! Why must I sit with them 
 and enter by their door when I so longed to be with the 
 gentle and soft- voiced girls? 
 
 And could I ever bring myself to see what was on 
 the other side of the sign: "For boys only"? What 
 right had / there? For I already recognized I was 
 really not a boy! At that age I gloated over being a 
 girl-boy. 
 
 There was thus provision for the comfort of the 
 boys. There was provision for the comfort of the 
 girls. But architects have never thought to make 
 provision for the girl-boys ! 
 
 The first week I suffered terribly rather than in- 
 vade the retreat barred to all but boys. Then an un- 
 printable experience right at my desk afforded the 
 room a good laugh and sent me home for dry clothing. 
 I now preferred the horror of the retreat to being 
 laughed at and sent home. But I made a virtue of 
 haste and watched for a moment when no other boy 
 was out. 
 
 Second year: I sat on a rear seat with a boy 
 whom I stared at and touched because of the softness 
 and radiance of his hair, the rich red of his cheeks, 
 
64 Sexual Precocity. 
 
 and his sturdy build. Now and then we kissed when 
 no one was looking. But once a loud smack reverber- 
 ated just after the near-sighted school-marm had re- 
 quested such stillness that one could hear a pin drop. 
 As she had never been kissed by a person of the op- 
 posite sex, she considered a smack the unpardonable 
 sin. My hero-boy took his whipping with a cynical 
 smile. But I wept for a half -hour. 
 
 Third year: I was caught in an immeasurably 
 worse impropriety 1 under a desk. The teacher thought 
 my parents ought to know. Violently angry, my 
 father hammered my body with the heel of a boot. 
 In a dozen years, not one of my numerous brothers and 
 sisters (although I was the only goody-goody one) 
 suffered such a thrashing. All the rest of my home life, 
 father treated me the worst of all, notwithstanding I 
 far excelled in school-work. What a trial to have a 
 girl-boy son? Why had I ever been born? Subse- 
 quently there existed a lifelong coolness between 
 father and me. 
 
 Fourth year: [A typical spring afternoon.] 
 After school, the west playground was thronged with 
 boys. I alone hastened directly to the street, embar- 
 rassed as a little girl alone with two hundred boys. 
 One calls out : "Ralph, hurry to the girls' yard where 
 you belong!" Another: "Ralph, your legs are as 
 shapely as a girl's. You would make a goodlooking 
 girl !" A third throws his arms around me and ex- 
 claims : "Kissing you is as good as kissing a girl !" 
 
 My embarrassment prevented my relishing these 
 attentions at the moment. But I always gloated over 
 them after I got to bed. 
 
 i Fellatio. 
 
Nature Indicated Rearing as a Girl. 65 
 
 I had not quite reached the gate when a ball rolled 
 to my feet and the players shouted for it. With beet- 
 red face on account of what I knew would be said, I 
 gave the ball an awkward toss. "Hah hah hah ! You 
 throw just like a girl! Miss Nancy!" 
 
 Often I went around Robin Hood's barn to avoid 
 this particular embarrassment. 
 
 Arrived in the girls' yard, I felt as if freed from 
 captivity and in my proper element. Shyness and 
 fright gave way to gleefulness. Moreover, I cared 
 only for the less strenuous games of the gentle sex. 
 
 Several boys mounted the high fence in order to 
 tease me. "Ralph, I promise you my sister's doll car- 
 riage to push to school !".... "Heigh, Miss Werther, 
 have you finished the mitten I saw you knitting?". . . . 
 "Say, Ralph, give me a kiss, will you ?" 
 
 While with girls, I liked nothing better than sucn 
 bantering. I outgirled them in our reaction to the 
 boys' teasing. We finally succeeded in provoking the 
 boys to chase us — my wish all along. To be chased by 
 boys was the highest of childhood's pleasures. 
 
 I was always the ringleader of my girl clique, 
 never reflecting on its unnaturalness. They never re- 
 garded me as a normal boy — only a "girl-boy." We 
 would even discuss our boy favorites. 
 
 Fifth year: My parents thought that if I were 
 shut up closely with boys and away from even the sight 
 of girls, I would be cured of my effeminacy. Thus my 
 fifth to eleventh years of school life were staged at a 
 boys' "prep" several miles from my home village and 
 numbering about a hundred students. But I was only 
 a day-pupil except during my senior year. 
 
66 Childhood Female-Impersonation. 
 
 The first week, it was an ordeal on a par with 
 being forced into breeches. I was in a state of chronic 
 fright. When addressed, my reply was inaudible six 
 feet away. But after becoming well-acquainted with 
 class-mates, I have seated myself on their laps right in 
 the school-room. For they appeared demigods. 
 
 They would run a hand up my arm. "Your skin 
 is softer than velvet. And your pencils look as if you 
 had chewed them off with your teeth. And what 
 makes you scream when a fellow merely touches you? 
 Ralph, you certainly ought to have been born a girl! 
 You will never make a man !" 
 
 On holidays I would run off to the house of a girl 
 friend. With several of the gentle sex, I would play 
 hide-and-seek in remote nooks, as hay-mows. Later 
 I would exchange clothing with one, and we would seek 
 boy acquaintances that I might display my skill in 
 female-impersonation. 
 
 Adult intimates would point the finger of scorn 
 in vain. To pass life as far as possible like a girl was 
 the very essence of existence, for which I was willing 
 to sacrifice everything else. 
 
 The instinctive manner of coasting is a criterion 
 of psychic sex. Every boy of my set, excepting my- 
 self, rode bellyflops — too strenuous for the soft- 
 muscled and timid girls. As I possessed their physical 
 and psychic softness, I also coasted upright. 
 
 In ascending the hill, I kept with the girls. I 
 enjoyed talking about only their interests. As the 
 boys passed, they would call out: "Girl-boy! Mollie 
 Coddle!" 
 
 One afternoon, two snow forts were built fifty feet 
 apart. All the boys, excepting myself, took their stand 
 
Outlook on Life at Eleven. 67 
 
 bravely behind the breastworks and rained snowballs 
 on the defenders of the opposite fort. The girls were 
 almost prostrate in the deep snow behind — out of 
 danger of being hit in the face — packing snowballs for 
 the throwers. And I, girl-boywise, did as they, the 
 eternal impropriety never dawning on me. 
 
 But one of the girls cried out : "Why are you not 
 throwing snowballs with the boys? Afraid of getting 
 hit, are you? Why don't you put on petticoats?" 
 
 After I retired that night, I had not yet recovered 
 from my speechless chagrin. "Why was it that I was 
 not taking a boy's place in life? Why did I sit upright 
 when coasting? Why did I feel more at home in girls' 
 attire? Why did the boys tease me just as they did the 
 girls? Could it be that I was a girl imprisoned in the 
 body of a boy? 
 
 "How could I face manhood? Are men under 
 compulsion to go and vote? But how could I push my 
 way into the crowd of rough men always hanging [at 
 that period] around the polling places? 
 
 "How terrible to be a boy! Couldn't I take papa's 
 razor and in a minute rid myself of the excrescence? 
 A razor ought to be sharp enough to do the job! 
 God, change my body this moment by a miracle ! Turn 
 me into a girl !" I sobbed. 
 
 One day, being a goody-goody, I had felt it my 
 duty to tell the teacher on a mischievous boy. As I 
 left the school for my train, I was seized violently. 
 "If you were a big, strong fellow like us, we would 
 give you a good thrashing! We'll only see if we ccn 
 lift you off the ground by your hair. The more you 
 cry, the better we like it. Keep your hands down! 
 
68 Girl-Boys' Reasons for Suicide. 
 
 Slap! Slap! Slap! And stop carrying your books 
 on your arm like a girl !" 
 
 When they let go their grip, I started off on a run, 
 only one boy pursuing and shouting out threats. I 
 shall now reveal the girl-boy's patented secret for get- 
 ting out of a predicament. I sprinted to the porch 
 of the first house, gave the door-bell several violent 
 jerks, and shrieked for help. 
 
 Sixth year : I was absorbed in fashioning a doll's 
 dress. An older sister angrily exclaimed : "Why don't 
 you get out on the ball-field like all other boys ? I hate 
 effeminate boys! Mother, I'm afraid Ralph is not 
 normal !" 
 
 At the moment I felt ashamed ever to look my 
 disgusted sister in the face again. So ashamed that I 
 wanted to kill myself. (One of my girl-boy playmates, 
 because bitterly persecuted on account of his effemina- 
 cy, actually committed suicide at twelve by swallowing 
 rat poison.) "I not normal? What did my sister 
 mean? Could she have had in mind my queer habit 
 of sitting on the boys' laps? I was the only boy that 
 acted so queerly. I had not realized it could be de- 
 scribed as 'abnormal.' " 
 
 On another occasion, I was, with two brothers, 
 skirting a creek on the way to the swimming-hole. We 
 came to a row of stepping-stones. My brothers trotted 
 across several times. But I lacked the courage even to 
 set foot on the first. 
 
 We found several "shavers" in the swimming-hole. 
 My two brothers joined them. But I liked only to 
 recline on the bank and feast my eyes. I would as 
 soon have stripped before boys as would a little girl. 
 
"/ Want to Die!" 69 
 
 I only got a sight of the swimming-hole because I had 
 brothers. 
 
 For the first time it occurred to a "shaver" to 
 strip and duck me. My brothers were ashamed of my 
 being a girl-boy and thought it would contribute 
 toward making a man of me. 
 
 "Stop your screeching, Ralph! You've got to be 
 stripped so we can see if you are a real boy! Stop 
 your scratching, or we'll give you a black eye ! . . . . Now 
 let's dip him under to stop his yelling!. . . . You can't 
 come around the swimming-hole any more unless you 
 get into the water with the rest of us ! . . . . Cry-baby ! 
 Cry-baby ! You're a hopeless case ! . . . . Clear out of 
 here!" 
 
 I half-way dressed and ran off in terror. Their 
 driving home the fact that I was a hopeless sexual 
 cripple brought on such melancholia as I had never 
 before experienced. I repeatedly blubbered out as I 
 ran : "I want to die ! I want to die !" 
 
70 How I Came to Be a Female-Impersonator. 
 
 III. An Androgyne's Youth. 
 
 It was not until my sixteenth year that I came to 
 a full realization that I am a male in name only. I had 
 always recognized my girllikeness and wished Nature 
 had created me a female. At the same time I had, 
 during my early teens, sometimes reflected that I 
 would outgrow all my feminine predilections and be 
 a normal man. But at fifteen my bust development 
 made me think that perhaps God at last was answering 
 my fervent prayers, around the age of nine, to be 
 changed into a physical girl. For I was already one 
 psychicly. 
 
 In my middle teens, my desire changed radically, 
 due chiefly to my having just become a God-intoxicated 
 youth, with the work of a missionary in China as my 
 goal. I now prayed far more intensely for full-fledged 
 manhood than I ever had for physical femininity. 
 
 Superficially and according to man-made law, ul< 
 tra-androgynes are men. According to the unabridged 
 dictionary, they are neither men nor women. 
 That is, they are capable neither of begetting nor con- 
 ceiving. But in respect to mind and feelings, in res- 
 pect to their protoplasm — and thus essentially — they 
 are women. 
 
 Being neither male nor female, with whom do an- 
 drogynes associate? Up to the dawning of puberty, 
 pronounced specimens — like myself — gravitate to- 
 ward the gentle sex. As soon as the sexual life is fully 
 developed, the vast majority (not happening to be 
 
A 'Village Fairie. 71 
 
 overconscientious and ultra-puritan) give that sex the 
 widest berth and lean on the bosoms of the ultra or tre- 
 mendously virile of their acquaintance. But they 
 never join in the sports of the sturdy sex. For in 
 athletics, they are as awkward as girls, and besides 
 lack the necessary physique. 
 
 But Nature happened to make me over-conscien- 
 tious, and my training was ultra-puritan. While, after 
 I entered my teens, I was ashamed longer to make my- 
 self one with girl acquaintances, and besides was vi- 
 olently repelled by our both approaching the full-flower 
 of our sexuality, my now looking upon my attraction 
 towards youths as the most heinous of sins, together 
 with my aversion from masculine interests, forbade 
 association with boys outside the schoolroom. Thus 
 from the age of thirteen to eighteen, I endured an al- 
 most companionless existence outside the home, the 
 schoolroom, and the church edifice. I did occasionally 
 take a walk with an androgyne of my own age, goody- 
 goodiness, education, and social standing. He, how- 
 ever, was not religious or of puritan parentage, and 
 was even then extensively promiscuous with the eco- 
 nomically better class of the village's youthful 
 "sports." 
 
 I myself turned away in deep shame from the 
 propositions of tremendously virile youths, although 
 secretly I would rather have yielded than do anything 
 else at all. At middle life, I have had doubts as to 
 whether I did the right thing in resisting. I believe my 
 health and happiness were tremendously impaired by 
 my ultra-puritan views which made me obstinate be- 
 fore Nature's behests. On the other hand, through 
 yielding I would have lost my reputation and probably 
 
72 Mine the Most Melancholy of Youthhoods. 
 
 been barred from "prep" and university. I was ex- 
 pelled from the latter as soon as the faculty learned 
 that I lived according to Nature's behests. The uni- 
 versity training is, of course, worth erotic pleasures 
 ten-thousand times over. But during the first two 
 years of my college course, my health and happiness 
 (as recounted in my Autobiography of an Andro- 
 gyne) were sorely wrecked by abstinence. Does the 
 wrong not after all lie in the groundless intolerance of 
 "prep" and university for androgynes who obey 
 Nature's demands, and fill, in an unobtrusive manner, 
 the niche in the universe for which the Great Architect 
 predestined them? 
 
 Thus being excluded from the pastimes of both 
 the recognized sexes and from their joint social inter- 
 course — on account of my belonging to a third and out- 
 cast sex — I found my only recreation from an ultra- 
 studious college-preparatory life in long walks on 
 country roads, during which I often brooded because 
 Providence had consigned me to membership in the 
 third sex. From the age of thirteen to eighteen, I 
 endured the most melancholy existence I have ever 
 heard or read of. 1 
 
 1 Particularly during my teens, I have worried and grieved 
 a thousand times as much as the average individual. I say 
 for the solace of fellow melancholiacs who retain their reason 
 that at my present age of forty-seven, I show not the least 
 sign of thinning or whitening hair. But this may be due to 
 my being an ultra-androgyne, a subspecies blessed with per- 
 ennial youth. Strangely also in my own case intense grief 
 (except the agonies in my Garden of Gethsemane, for which 
 see close of this chapter) has seemed to put physical strength 
 into my usually weak body. I feel also that it sharpens my wits 
 and adds to my wisdom and literary ability. "There's not an 
 ill wind but blows some good." 
 
 At the age of forty-seven my conviction is that great 
 sorrows, after the lapse of a score of years, are recognized 
 
Reasons for Melancholia. 73 
 
 Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a 
 youth than to make the startling discovery that he, 
 though extremely conscientious and offenceless, is a 
 type of sexual cripple that has always been regarded 
 by the sexually full-fledged — because of their ignor- 
 ance and Phariseeism — as the lowest of the low, a 
 monster of wickedness, and an outcast from society? 
 
 Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a 
 girl — and a very high-strung one — than for Nature to 
 disguise her as a boy, and foreordain that she should 
 be brought up as a boy and be, at school, office, etc., al- 
 ways shut up with the sterner sex? 
 
 Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a 
 girl than to be doomed to pass through life incarnated 
 in a male body? How grief -provoking for a made- 
 moiselle to be cursed with a slight growth of hair on lip 
 
 to have been blessings in disguise. My life experience has 
 demonstrated that "there is a Providence that shapes our ends, 
 rough-hew them as we will." My life experience has demon- 
 strated that the biblical teachings about human life are in 
 general true, and that either the Christian or Jewish religion 
 is practically necessary to save from despair and suicide men 
 and women foreordained to drain the cup of anguish to the 
 dregs. My personal faith in Christian doctrine, and my habit, 
 instilled in infancy, of "taking everything to God in prayer," 
 have saved me from suicide a thousand times and made the 
 deepest of sorrows tolerable. 
 
 The upshot of my very exceptional life experience is: 
 (1) "Praise God from whom all blessings flow;" and (2) 
 Even pain, sorrow, and death are blessings in disguise. The 
 heart of the universe is beneficent. 
 
 As I have had an unusual religious experience, one of the 
 numerous books I plan to write, if my life is spared, will be 
 entitled: MY SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY. I have made 
 many discoveries in religion and ethics which I long to proclaim 
 to the world. As already stated, I have always been ultra-re- 
 ligious and a deep student of the Bible. Another book I plan 
 to write will be entitled: THE BIBLE AND THE SEXUAL IN- 
 STINCT. In the latter I will seek to demolish the Church's 
 chief stumbling-block. As already stated, I was cut out for a 
 preacher. 
 
74 Early Consciousness of Deformity. 
 
 or cheeks ! Only a trifling male stigma ! How much 
 more heart-rending for a mademoiselle to possess the 
 male physique to such an extent that even all physi- 
 cians (except a handful of sexologists) with their 
 present lack of knowledge — or rather their closing 
 their eyes to all evidence — would declare her a male, 
 and prescribe that she should in life fill the latter role. 
 
 Such was my chronic burden almost throughout 
 my teens. (Subsequently, with the exception of brief 
 spells of melancholia, I became reconciled to my fate.) 
 And such is the burden imposed by Nature on one 
 youth out of every three hundred in every social set 
 of every country in the world. But because of my in- 
 tellectuality, high-class environment, and extreme an- 
 drogynism, my grief was exceptionally intense. I do 
 not believe the mildly androgynous are melancholy 
 during their teens. They have not yet become con- 
 scious that they are abnormal. 
 
 My chronic lamentation during my seventeenth to 
 nineteenth years was : "Miserable wretch ! Miserable 
 wretch ! Miserable wretch ! That's all I am ! I was 
 born with a deformed nature, despicable in the eyes of 
 all people ! I am a soft effeminate youth who is wanted 
 nowhere ! I am ashamed to look any one in the face ! 
 I feel like putting an end to my life, or else losing my- 
 self, to all who know who I am, in a distant city where 
 I could live according to my queer nature. I have 
 nothing to live for ! I may be disgraced, disgrace my 
 family, be compelled to flee, be disowned by my 
 parents, be cursed and be despised throughout the 
 land!" 
 
 An older sister frequently vented her spite on me 
 because of her disgust at my effeminacy. The Sunday 
 
Horror of Fire-arms. 75 
 
 school picnic in my seventeenth year led up to one of 
 the greatest sorrows of my youth. "You little cow- 
 ard!" my sister the next day began. "Even eight- 
 year-old George has more pluck! I was so mortified 
 to see you the only boy to refuse to pick up the rifle in 
 the shooting contest! The others could hardly wait 
 their turn. And to-day you do look like a freak in that 
 pink ruffled shirt! And with your hair banged! 
 Trying to doll yourself up as much like a girl as you 
 can, are you?" 
 
 "I am, too, so ashamed of your bangs, Ralph !" my 
 mother chimed in. "They make you look as if you 
 didn't know anything!" 
 
 "Mother, make him go to C's party next Wednes- 
 day. He stays away from all gatherings of young 
 people. He will grow up a boor." 
 
 "I would rather be thrashed than go to any party ! 
 I do not like to pay gallantries to women !" 
 
 "You will never make a man unless you do, son. 
 I insist that you go to C's party." 
 
 Wednesday evening arrived, and with two score 
 youngsters, I was lounging in C's parlors. My older 
 sister had managed to have me escort a girl. Unfor- 
 tunate female, to be attended by one of her own sex 
 whom Nature had disguised as a man ! 
 
 It was extreme torture to have to go into society 
 and put myself forward as a gallant. Accordingly I 
 grasped the first opportunity to escape to the garden. 
 I could look into the brilliantly lighted drawing-rooms 
 filled with the youthful merry-makers. The spectacle 
 moved me to tears. 
 
 "To think that Providence permits to all young 
 people excepting myself the joys of love and courtship ! 
 
76 I Become a Religious Prodigy. 
 
 Because if I followed my inclinations along these lines, 
 people would call me a monster and I would be a 
 pariah I 1 
 
 "I wish I might get away from the world and live 
 as a hermit ! Then I would in a way be unsexed, and 
 would be so regarded by the world. 
 
 "People see that I am an effeminate youth! An 
 effeminate youth ! And my sister has often expressed 
 her disgust for that type ! Who can like them? 
 
 "I feel that there is nothing which can henceforth 
 give me interest in life ! I feel so mortified that I am 
 a girl-boy ! Oh it looks as if there were no God !" 
 
 At fifteen I developed into a religious prodigy. 
 Until my debut as a quasi-public female-impersonator 
 at nineteen, I, though the most melancholy person of 
 my community, was active in church work. During 
 these four years, I attended seven religious services a 
 week (exclusive of college chapel every morning dur- 
 ing two of these years) and from fifteen to seventeen, 
 spent two hours a day in private devotions in addition. 
 As early as fifteen, I was the leader of prayer meet- 
 ings. I preached from the pulpit a dozen times at 
 nineteen — a few months before I relinquished all 
 Church work because instinct drove me to female-im- 
 personation. All the ultra-pious of my ultra-puritan 
 entourage predicted for me a great career as a herald 
 
 1 After my conversion at fifteen, I fought against my 
 sexual attraction toward schoolmates as few others have 
 struggled against the ruling passion. I was no longer a co- 
 quette, although desiring as much as ever to be such. My pas- 
 sion for loud apparel, however, was not suppressed since I did 
 not recognize in it any sin. 
 
My Life's Motto. 77 
 
 of Christianity — to which vocation I had already at 
 fifteen dedicated my life. 
 
 Thus as early as fifteen, I was frequently called 
 upon to lead the congregation in extemporaneous 
 prayer. Usually my key-note (for my private prayers 
 as well) was my life's motto, which I adopted at fif- 
 teen: 
 
 "My times are in Thy hand, 
 
 Whatever they may be ; 
 
 Pleasing or painful, 
 
 Dark or bright, 
 
 As best may seem to Thee!" 
 
 Tears would course down my cheeks and my voice 
 tremble with emotion. I never failed to remember 
 that I had the greatest need of all for the rest for 
 which I pleaded and which Jesus has promised to give 
 "the oppressed and heavy laden." 
 
 After service, all other youths escorted a girl 
 home and lingered over the gate for blissful conversa- 
 tion. But I had the habit of making my solitary way 
 to a desolate abandoned graveyard whose latest head- 
 stone was set up in the twenties of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 Behold my Garden of Gethsemane, where not 
 merely once, but once each week, I would throw myself 
 on a grass-covered grave, writhe in an agony of moans, 
 and even shriek. All my muscles seemed to be rigid, 
 and my fists were clinched. I would dig my finger- 
 nails into my palms, and throw my arms about wildly. 
 
 "Change my nature, God," I would cry. "This 
 very moment. By a miracle. Give me the mind and 
 powers of a man. 
 
78 
 
 My Temptations Hardly Equalled. 
 
 "Am I being 'tried by fire,' as the Bible predicts 
 for God's children? Are others so tried by fire as I 
 have been nearly all my life?" 
 
 [After half-a-century of rare opportunities to 
 learn human nature, I have ascertained that I was 
 tried worse than any one else I have heard of — that is, 
 by torture of sexual desire that must not be gratified, 
 and practically was not from seven to eighteen, inclu- 
 sive. I was tried by fire a hundred times as hot as the 
 average person ever knows. Probably so hot because 
 of my intense fairie-ism from two to six. I believe I 
 have, for years together, resisted lust many times as 
 intense as the average person ever knows.] 
 
 My Garden of Gethsemane 
 
In My Garden of Gethsemane. 79 
 
 "I am experiencing the enslaving power of sin. 
 I now know how to sympathize with poor drunkards 
 and harlots. I will flog and starve myself in order to 
 conquer my flesh. [I actually fasted and flagellated 
 myself to ascertain the effect in deadening my amor- 
 ousness but found these religious exercises useless.] 
 
 "I feel to-night that I can never become a preach- 
 er of the Gospel. I feel that I must give up all plans 
 for a noble career, and that maybe I shall come to a 
 disgraceful end ! 
 
 "Oh that all instinct would die in me! It makes 
 my life miserable. How gladly would I be free from 
 all desire so that I could make a name for myself in 
 the world! An extreme girl-boy can hardly become 
 a scholar and a preacher. 
 
 "Is it my divinely appointed task to learn the 
 lesson of resignation in affliction? To feel myself 
 crushed to earth by the Almighty Hand? Like Isaac, 
 to be tried in order to see whether I am willing to be 
 slain in my youth — in my own case morally?" a 
 
 1 1 had in mind possible predestination to be a fille de joie 
 — the career which haunted me, off and on, every year of my 
 life after my second, even years before I heard of the existence 
 of such filles. I had already had an intensive five years 
 career (third to seventh years). Another foreshadowing (that 
 of my actual career from my twenty-sixth to fortieth years) 
 was a common dream, from about my ninth to fourteenth 
 years, of being chased through streets and fields by youthful 
 soldiers, who would finally catch me, and great terror would 
 result. The dream occurred so often that in my waking 
 hours I resolved, the next time I had that dream, to tell the 
 soldier boldly: "I am not afraid of you, because this is only a 
 dream!" Repeatedly in my dreams did I tell that to the 
 soldier who had grabbed me, but he replied (as I dreamt): 
 "You are mistaken. This is not a dream. It is the real thing!" 
 And then I would become as terrified as ever. My dream 
 would always end a second or two after being grabbed, and 
 generally I would wake up as if from a night-mare. 
 
80 Man's Pri'dery Almost Fatal. 
 
 After an hour of bitter tears and heart-broken 
 pleadings to the Architect of the universe, I would be 
 in a state of mental and physical collapse for twenty- 
 four hours. Can the reader wonder that, weighed 
 down by such a burden, I repeatedly meditated suicide 
 during these four terrible years? And I realize now 
 — at middle age — that I had to suffer these four years 
 of melancholia only because of cultured man's mis- 
 understanding of androgynism, prohibition of any' 
 one's inquiring into the facts, and bitter persecution 
 of androgynes. 1 
 
 Events have proved that it was the policy of the 
 All-Wise and All-Good not to answer my prayers, not- 
 withstanding their almost unexampled earnestness 
 and repetition. The Eternal foresaw that it was to 
 the best interests both of the human race and of my- 
 self that I should leave to others the coveted work of 
 preaching the Gospel to the heathen and spend my 
 physical prime in New York's Underworld as an avo- 
 cational female-impersonator. That was the cross 
 that God willed that I should bear. The role of fe- 
 male-impersonator is the niche in the universe that its 
 Architect had created me to fill. 
 
 In middle life I have often thought that Provi- 
 dence mercifully spared me from suicide — the fate of 
 so many youthful androgynes as a result of the world's 
 persecution — and foreordained my career of female- 
 
 1 Anglo-Saxon leaders of thought have hitherto been of the 
 opinion that the domain of sex is "terra interdicta," just as 
 those of Roger Bacon's time (priests and monks exclusively) 
 would have believed it sacrilege to use a telescope or micro- 
 scope — "to see what God meant man should never see." Roger, 
 although having invented these instruments, did not dare tell 
 his generation because the leaders of thought would have burnt 
 him alive for invading terra interdicta. 
 
Innocent Androgynes Now in Prison. 81 
 
 impersonator that I might, through publishing the 
 present trilogy, remove the veil of ignorance and pre- 
 judice as regards androgynism that now blinds the 
 cultured, and occasions terrible persecution to Nature's 
 inoffensive step-children, who number one out of every 
 two hundred inmates of our state prisons, having been 
 incarcerated merely on the ground of homosexuality. 
 
82 How I Came to Be a Female-Impersonator. 
 
 IV. I Grow into THE FAIR1E BOY. 
 
 At sixteen, I entered a college in New York City. 
 I alone was responsible for the scene of my university 
 training. I had frequently visited New York and 
 wished to reside there. But I had then no intention of 
 ever yielding to my detested instincts for female-im- 
 personation. I had not realized that residence in a 
 great city would make temptation far stronger than in 
 a village. My being fated to make my home in New 
 York almost throughout my adulthood has had a tre- 
 mendous influence on my life, particularly from nine- 
 teen to thirty-one. 
 
 My father gave me every educational advantage 
 because in the fairly large "prep" that I attended 
 from my tenth to sixteenth years, I attained the 
 highest scholarship in the history of the school. In an 
 address to the students, the principal named me as the 
 youthful scholar to be patterned after by the other 
 boys (! ! !). 
 
 I know I shall be accused of exaggerated ego for the 
 way I talk about myself in this and the next chapter. 
 But seven articles have been published about myself 
 in medical journals, exclusive of numerous reviews of 
 my Autobiography of an Androgyne. How many 
 people can go into a library, call for magazines, and 
 gaze at pictures of themselves within their covers? 
 How many people have had a three-volume autobiog- 
 raphy published? With such a record, I suspect that 
 I am either insane or else one of the half-dozen most 
 
Front View of Author at Thirty-three 
 (Photo by Dr. R. W. Shufeldt) 
 
The Author's Brain. 83 
 
 remarkable sexual curiosities of my generation. On 
 the latter chance, I am moved to leave on record a full 
 account of both my inner and outer rare life ex- 
 perience. 
 
 As to bragging about my intellect, my experience 
 of half-a-century is that in general, Providence makes 
 compensations in the lives of men so that as they, one 
 by one, pass on to the next world, all have fared equally 
 as concerns Heaven-sent boons and the opposite. As 
 a counterweight to having created me a bitterly per- 
 secuted sexual cripple (for His inscrutable but surely 
 wise ends) the Architect of the universe endowed me 
 with a brain of such capacity as found in only one out 
 of twenty-five university graduates. I wrote stories 
 at eight. At thirteen I was confident I would become 
 an author and my name be chiselled on the walls of 
 fame. 1 
 
 My college associates commented on my fem- 
 inesqueness and infantilism. I perceived that I was 
 looked upon as a curiosity. 
 
 I am a curiosity in that while throughout life re- 
 maining a species of moron, 2 certain cerebral lobes 
 have nevertheless progressed to a high development 
 enabling me to graduate from a university almost at 
 the head of my class notwithstanding my general 
 psychic infantilism and my suffering from acute sper- 
 
 i However, as described in detail in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 OF AN ANDROGYNE, the congenital extraordinarily keen 
 edge on my intellect was progressively and permanently dulled 
 from the age of sixteen to twenty-three by emissions during 
 sleep twice a week. It is necessary to add that I always had 
 acute horror of self-abuse. 
 
 2 An adult who never surpasses the mentality of a child 
 of twelve. 
 
84 The Author a Curiosity. 
 
 matorrhea and (during my freshman and sophomore 
 years) acute melancholia. If my physical health had 
 been as good as that of the three men who outstripped 
 me, I might have led my university class. 
 
 I am a curiosity in that down to twenty-five, I 
 was a fair specimen of physical infantilism or lilli- 
 putianism. I was said to possess the skull and facial 
 lines of an infant. Down to twenty-five, I never 
 weighed more than 110 pounds on a height of five feet 
 five. Nearly all my brothers and uncles have been six- 
 footers. 
 
 I am a curiosity in that I possess the light female 
 osseous structure. Even before I began to develop 
 adipose tissue after twenty-five, I would float on fresh 
 water without moving a muscle, my observation being 
 that the slim normal boy must vibrate his hands. 
 
 I am a curiosity in that form of skeleton and con- 
 tour of body are mostly feminine, particularly the bust. 
 
 Not until the age of nineteen, when I went suc- 
 cessively to two medical college professors and im- 
 plored them to make me a complete male, did I learn 
 that practically all the tissues of my body are of char- 
 acteristically feminine texture. My muscles, judged 
 by their weakness and my using them in general 
 woman-fashion, are those of a female. The beardal 
 growth is normally male except that it could never 
 reach the length of an eighth of an inch and has no 
 stiffness. If I had not shaved or eradicated the beard, 
 I would have been, after seventeen, one of the dog- 
 faced boys of the circus. Although the hair cells seem 
 as dense as on my scalp, I could never have exhibited 
 virile whiskers. 
 
Coddled in College. 85 
 
 Another feminine resemblance is that at the age 
 of half-a-century, I show not the least tendency to 
 baldness. 
 
 Several of my college associates coddled and 
 babied me. They would throw an arm around me and 
 cry: "Child!" They would hold me on their laps. 
 With the three ultra-virile with whom I became most 
 intimate and confidential, I would often in private 
 throw myself into their arms and pillow my head on 
 their bosoms, while they would exclaim: "Lovesick 
 boy!" They never betrayed my strange conduct to 
 others or appeared less friendly. Only one of the 
 three made greater advances than I myself — the only 
 one belonging to the tremendously virile class. What 
 chiefly kept me from even hinting at extremes was 
 fear of expulsion in case it should become generally 
 known. But I was also strongly influenced by the 
 dictates of society and the teaching of the Bible — as I 
 then erroneously understood the latter. 1 
 
 "You still possess the real childlike naivete," 
 students have remarked. "And you possess childlike 
 features to harmonize with your decidedly childlike 
 manner of going about things. You are certainly 
 The Boy Who Never Grew to Be a Man." 
 
 1 One of my three confidants achieved the highest success 
 in life of any student in college with me; — one of the highest 
 political offices in the United States. Down to forty, I confided 
 my homosexual adventures, although after we graduated, our 
 personal relations were never closer than shaking hands. 
 Within two years of his honorable name's appearing in absolute- 
 ly every newspaper of the Union, he permitted me to receive 
 mail addressed to one of my aliases (used only by those who 
 knew I was an androgyne) in his care. At the time I did not 
 realize the favor I was asking — the risk to his reputation that 
 he unselfishly took. Ungrounded scandals sometimes arise 
 when a full-fledged man does favors for an androgyne. 
 
86 Childlike and Womanlike. 
 
 "I like to watch you because of your childlike 
 grimaces. That is why the fellows are continually 
 teasing you; because it is just like teasing a child or a 
 girl. You react with a sort of pleased childlike pride 
 at being the object of attention." 
 
 "Your voice, though hoarse, has a feminine timbre. 
 It possesses the penetrating and carrying power of a 
 child's voice. It often breaks and changes, sometimes 
 in the middle of a sentence. From being masculine, 
 it suddenly changes timbre and becomes decidedly fem- 
 inine, passing over from a bass to a treble. Your 
 voice is sentimental, bland, caressing. It is the kind 
 of voice a dying woman would choose to hear." 
 
 "I never saw the chevelure [as they shoved their 
 fingers through it] so fine and silklike in any one else 
 who wore trousers. Your hands [as they would hold 
 them] are as soft and hairless as those of a girl. And 
 you have the arms of a woman [when my sleeves 
 were rolled back]. And you blush just like a woman. 
 And you sob like her. I never saw tears run down the 
 cheeks of any other man as he sat in the class-room." 
 
 I have jokingly replied with a smile at my class- 
 mate's mystification : "You do not know but what I am 
 a woman !" But I shrank from any serious disclosure 
 of the secrets of my sex, such a mystery to many of my 
 every-day associates. 
 
 If I live to old age, I intend to call the present 
 trilogy to the attention of some of my associates of 
 early years who have indicated great curiosity to know 
 the secrets of my sex life. I have permitted only three 
 friends (of course the closest) who know me under my 
 legal name to read my Autobiography of an Andro- 
 gyne, and one of the three dropped me from his friend- 
 
Feminine Figure Recognized. 87 
 
 ship. Men are so biassed on the subject of sex that I 
 can not let my friends read the secrets of my life until 
 I reach an independent old age when they can not make 
 me suffer much on account of my androgynism. 
 
 In college, I was compelled to exercise in the 
 "gym." I hid my form. It was a terrible ordeal to 
 have to strip before the physical director, who remark- 
 ed: "Your figure is feminine." Apparently he did 
 not suspect the sexuality that was bound up with that 
 figure. If military drill had been required — as in 
 1917 — I would have quit the university. 1 
 
 Since nineteen my yearning for skirts has been 
 in part met by habitually wearing about my home an 
 ornamental dressing-gown. Thus clad, I have often 
 gazed in a mirror, imagining myself a complete female. 
 I have taken pleasure in hearing the gown rustle, like 
 a silk dress; in feeling it strike against my legs; and 
 in holding up the front in ascending the stairs. 
 
 The Fairie Boy was my nickname from nineteen 
 to thirty-one outside my every-day circle. And out- 
 side I was far more widely known. Inside I had the 
 reputation of being an insignificant, puritan, unprac- 
 tical bookworm and Mollie Coddle who knew nothing 
 of life and human nature. Outside I achieved wide 
 notoriety as an amateur actor — or, properly speaking, 
 actress. 
 
 1 Some androgynes of a less extreme type, however, tolerate 
 militaries. I know of two who served in the World War — 
 because they wanted, every day and hour, to be surrounded by 
 adored young Mars. But if they ever got to the front, they 
 would probably malinger. I know of another androgyne who 
 was so afraid of being drafted that he took a hatchet and 
 chopped off two fingers of his right hand. In the World War, 
 I was subject to draft under the latest law. I had planned to 
 escape by claiming that I was not a man, the law specifying 
 that sex alone as liable. 
 
88 Man, Woman, and Infant in One Body. 
 
 That the distinction, among- the sons of Adam, of 
 being The Fairie Boy came to me, is nothing for 
 which I can take credit to myself. It was merely be- 
 cause Providence had made me, as an adult, physically 
 as well as psychicly, one-third man, one-third woman, 
 and one-third infant. Providence endowed me with 
 a "small-boy" aspect, the subject of comment in my 
 every-day circle down to my early forties; freshness 
 of complexion down to thirty; innocent expression of 
 features and marvellous absence of animality (in 
 appearance only) ; cry-baby mentality; eternal child- 
 likeness even in my professional life; and slender, 
 lithe, and lilliputian figure down to twenty-five. 
 
 The Fairie Boy ! To be frank — I am proud of the 
 pretty nickname. This Providential distinction is 
 part of my compensation for my almost unparalleled 
 sufferings from persecution at present inseparable 
 from the lot of an ultra-androgyne. 
 
Rear View of Author at Thirty-three 
 (Photo by Dr. R. W. Shufeldt) 
 
How I Came to Be a Female-Impersonator. 89 
 
 V. The Boy Who Never Grew to Be a Man. 
 
 For the most part, the present chapter covers my 
 twenty-sixth to thirty-second years, during which my 
 most descriptive nickname was The Soldiers' 
 Friend. For I was foreordained to a sort of army 
 life for many years, detailed in my Autobiography of 
 an Androgyne, but omitted in the present volume. 
 Here I limit myself to some related personal descrip- 
 tion. 
 
 Physique and Psyche : My career as avocational 
 female-impersonator during- the second half-dozen 
 years of my physical prime was even more remarkable 
 than during the first (outlined in Part Three). 
 My quasi-public career as female-impersonator ended 
 at thirty-one — at its very zenith — because I deemed 
 myself too old longer to play the part of "French doll- 
 baby," and because the instinct thereto progressively 
 weakened from the age of thirty. My being able to 
 play that part down to thirty-one was possible only be- 
 cause Nature had endowed me with the proper phy- 
 sique and psyche, already described. Less extreme 
 androgynes lack the qualifications, while practically 
 all the extreme (commonly known as "fairies", "fags", 
 or "brownies") lack the necessary good sense, modes- 
 ty, temperance, and high grade of general morality 
 that were mine because of my puritan childhood and 
 youth and university education. 
 
 The proneness of the eternal feminine greatly to 
 understate her age made me in my twenty-sixth year, 
 
90 Infantilism, etc., a Bar in Business. 
 
 when impersonating a doll-baby, pass as twenty-one, 
 and in my fortieth, as twenty-eight. An unmarried 
 female, as long as she has hopes of lassoing a husband, 
 never gets beyond the lingering years of twenty-eight 
 or twenty-nine. 
 
 Simultaneous "Male" Professional Life: In 
 my twenties, thirties, and forties, I have worked hard 
 in three successive learned professions. At nineteen 
 I had already relinquished my amateur work of 
 preacher of the Gospel on being forced by Nature into 
 the avocation of female-impersonator. Simultaneous- 
 ly with my satisfying my frivolous and coquettish in- 
 stincts of French doll-baby, I also met the demands of 
 my male intellectual spirit by doing brain work of a 
 high order. My three successive professions have 
 seemingly been adopted by chance, although during 
 "boyhood" I manifested special aptitude for all three, 
 besides that of preacher. I did not choose them. 
 They were only makeshifts after I was barred from my 
 choice: preaching the Gospel. I can not name them 
 lest I disclose my identity. 
 
 I have achieved the average professional success. 
 But my extreme effeminacy and both facial and psy- 
 chic infantilism have prevented employers meting 
 out the full advancement that past work merited. 
 Men less capable than myself have been promoted over 
 me because my chiefs had the impression that I was 
 merely "a grown-up child" — that is, moron-like, al- 
 though as a matter of fact I possessed the intellectual 
 qualifications. 
 
 Office associates have now and then commented 
 in my hearing on my feminesqueness notwithstand- 
 ing they have not usually entertained the least idea 
 
F eminesqueness Recognized in Business. 91 
 
 that from nineteen to thirty-one, I impersonated, an 
 average of one evening a week, a French doll-baby. 
 Some remarks, however, even down to my middle for- 
 ties, indicated that some suspected the truth about my 
 sexual life. But I never betrayed that life to any of 
 my business associates excepting three or four confi- 
 dants, who — I must explain — were mere Platonic 
 friends. I was too much ashamed to ape the woman 
 before those acquainted with my intellectual accom- 
 plishments. The following are samples of remarks 
 of office associates: 
 
 "Good morning, Baby!" 
 
 "Grinning kid!" 
 
 "You look like a frightened bunny!" (While be- 
 ing teased. I was always the favorite subject for 
 teasing by full-fledged males. In school, university, 
 and office (the latter down to my middle forties only) 
 they teased me as they would a girl. Moreover, my 
 face expresses my emotions in an uncommon manner.) 
 
 "Your breasts are certainly beauts! You must 
 be half woman !" 
 
 "Look, Ralph, Ed is throwing kisses at you !" 
 
 "Ralph, I was just going to ask you for a kiss !" 
 
 "Ralph, you are nothing but a child half-a-century 
 old!" (When impressed by my childish grimaces and 
 childlike way of going about everything.) 
 
 "Say, Ralph, won't you favor me with the recipe 
 for perennial youth? I never saw such a contrast be- 
 tween apparent and actual age!" (During my early 
 forties.) 
 
 "Ralph, you are a tub of mush! You look like a 
 fat frau in the last stage of pregnancy!" (The reader 
 will pardon the vulgarity occasioned by my wish to 
 
92 Simultaneous Life as Three Persons. 
 
 give the exact words used by an office associate to de- 
 scribe my figure after the age of forty-three.) 
 
 Nearly all my professional life has been under my 
 legal name. It has been completely apart from my 
 avocation of female-impersonator. I have sometimes 
 thought I might be an instance of the dual personality 
 recognized by psychologists. Only, while living out 
 either side of my own duality, I have always had a 
 complete memory of the other side and recognized the 
 oneness of my ego in my two widely opposed careers. 
 
 In my middle twenties, I lived under three names 
 and personalities. I worked seven hours a day for a 
 legal journal as "Earl Lind." Because under that 
 name I had called on its editor to persuade him to 
 publish my Autobiography of an Androgyne, rep- 
 resenting myself as merely its author's agent. The 
 editor was in his sixties, and happening just then to 
 need an assistant, immediately hired me, never ques- 
 tioning the truthfulness of my representations as to 
 who I was. He was at the time also one of the leading 
 criminal lawyers in New York City. He employed me 
 in all sorts of confidential capacities and let me into 
 many of the secrets of his clients. Of course I would 
 never have proved false to his trust, even though he 
 never knew who I really was and where I lived. I 
 attended court with him as his clerk. I learned all the 
 intricacies of establishing a false alibi for a wealthy 
 androgyne whom he represented in a case originating 
 in blackmail by an adolescent. I was his assistant 
 while he was defending a client from prosecution by 
 Anthony Comstock, when the latter gentleman was 
 personally acquainted with me under the name of 
 "Earl Lind," and knew I was trying to get the 
 
Court Employee Was Ultra-Criminal. 93 
 
 Autobiography of an Androgyne published, which 
 he had already interdicted. 
 
 Thus I was, in a sense, a court employee of New 
 York City, while at the same time one of its greatest 
 criminals — according to a statute that is a legacy from 
 the Dark Ages. 
 
 Simultaneously with my career as lawyer's clerk, 
 I taught school five evenings a week under my legal 
 name, and every Saturday evening took up my avo- 
 cation of female-impersonator under the name of 
 "Jennie June." 
 
 Though I passed as three separate personalities 
 within the same week, they had — poor things — to 
 share the identic body alternately. 
 
 Necessity of Aliases : I have used five : Raphael 
 Werther, Ralph Werther, Earl Lind, Jennie June, and 
 Pussie. When I began my double life, I told the 
 Underworld my legal name was Raphael Werther. I 
 named myself after "the Prince of Painters," because 
 he was the greatest ultra-androgyne who ever lived. 
 He was my idol — my ideal. I wished him to pass 
 through the earthly life all over again in my body. I 
 further named myself after "the Prince of Amatory 
 Melancholiacs" since I was myself such during my 
 teens. Werther was Goethe himself, the most brilliant 
 and most versatile man, "the Prince of Men," born 
 subsequently to the Shakespeare-Author (Francis 
 Bacon). 
 
 As for the genesis of my first feminine name, I 
 chose "Jennie" at four. I have always considered 
 it the most feminine of names. When I began my 
 double life, I appended "June." I adopted that sur- 
 name because of its beautiful associations, as well as 
 
94 Choosing Aliases. 
 
 because of the repetition of the j and n. I have always 
 considered "Jennie June" as the most exquisite of 
 names: the poetic name; the magic name; the "divine" 
 name (in the sense that we speak of the "divine" or 
 "godlike" human form) . I later substituted the fem- 
 inine "Pussie" because so nicknamed, much to my 
 delight, by the tremendously virile. 
 
 I later adopted "Earl" primarily because it 
 rhymes with "girl", the creature of enchantment that 
 I longed to be, and secondarily because it arouses noble 
 ideas. I adopted "Lind" after Jennie Lind, one of my 
 models. 
 
 Perhaps these fancies about names are proof of 
 insanity. A medical reviewer of my Autobiography 
 of an Androgyne, who devoted only five minutes to 
 the 70,000 words, declared me "clearly insane." 
 
 When I transferred my female-impersonations 
 from Mulberry Street to the Fourteenth Street Rialto, 
 incredulity occasioned my transliterating the fancy 
 "Raphael" to prosaic "Raiph." 
 
 As a result of my 1905 court-martial making the 
 names "Ralph Werther" and "Jennie June" known 
 to some army heads, I found it advisable, when in 1907 
 renewing my kind of army life for seven years, to 
 choose new masculine and feminine names. I feared 
 it might become known to the army heads that the 
 fairie "Jennie June" had transferred "her" stage for 
 female-impersonations to a distant military post. 
 Hence the substitutions of "Earl Lind" and "Pussie." 
 
 On a single day I have had to sign myself with 
 four different names. Always after writing my signa- 
 ture, I must review it painstakingly to make sure I 
 have put down the proper one. Only once I have made 
 
Two Handwritings. 95 
 
 a mistake. In receipting for a registered letter ad- 
 dressed "Earl Lind, General Delivery," I signed my 
 legal name. To the clerk's inquiry I replied that I 
 had been authorized by Lind. He sent word to Lind 
 for written authorization, which was promptly des- 
 patched. 
 
 I have had to acquire two entirely distinct hand- 
 writings — the second for my numerous love letters. 1 
 None were ever written more mushy than those of 
 "Jennie June" and I guarded against their ever being 
 traceable to the intellectual and puritan "Ralph 
 Werther" (by which name I refer to my every-day 
 self in my books) . I have often, within an hour, 
 written letters in the two different hands. 
 
 Confidants : Throughout the three decades of my 
 double life, I have, outside several physicians, disclos- 
 ed it only to nine confidants of my every-day circle. 
 One expressed his amazement that I should disclose it 
 at all, affirming that even my best friend would be like- 
 ly to get me thrown out of my economic and social posi- 
 tion. All my lay confidants, however, proved helpful 
 and compassionate excepting one, who, while never dis- 
 closing my secret, dropped me from his friendship, al- 
 though we had been the very closest of Platonic 
 friends. One physician brought about my expulsion 
 from the university and made me a Bowery outcast 
 and fairie. 
 
 Because of the terrible persecutions inflicted by 
 the criminally-minded "saints" who happened to be 
 born sexually full-fledged, hardly a single cultured an- 
 drogyne ever betrays his bisexuality to a single confi- 
 
 i Non-mushy specimens are given in my AUTOBIOGRA- 
 PHY OF AN ANDROGYNE. Its editor killed the mushy. 
 
96 Author's Contribution to Sociology. 
 
 dant of his every-day circle excepting the tremendous- 
 ly virile bachelor whom he may have chosen as soul- 
 mate. I am an exception in outspokenness. Decades 
 ago I rose above the prudery and bias with which most 
 leaders of thought are to-day bound hand and foot. I 
 desire that men interested in the improvement of the 
 human race, and in the question of justice to all class- 
 es, have the opportunity of getting at the facts con- 
 cerning the atypic and atavic types with whom I have 
 been intimately thrown through having been foreor- 
 dained to pass a large part of my life in the Under- 
 world. 
 
tltye Jfzttrie %o^ 
 
 ************ 
 
 I. Female-Impersonation. 
 
 In Part Three, I shall outline what kind of adult 
 career is the natural sequel of the childhood and ad- 
 olescence described in Part Two; what kind of adult 
 career is bound up with the physique and psyche with 
 which I am endowed. I shall disclose what Providence 
 had in store for the youthful religious prodigy of the 
 Connecticut hills — the delicate, lilliputian, chicken- 
 hearted girl-boy — after he had been swallowed up in 
 New York's millions. 
 
 Since ultra-androgynes are, in a sense, instances 
 of dual personality — a male soul and a female soul 
 inhabiting the same brain and body — it is natural for 
 them to live a double-life. 
 
 Moreover, as the "classy," hypocritical, and bigot- 
 ed Overworld considers a bisexual as monster and out- 
 cast, I was driven to a career in the democratic, frank, 
 and liberal-minded Underworld. While my male soul 
 was a leader in scholarship at the university uptown, 
 my female soul, one evening a week, flaunted itself as 
 a French doll-baby in the shadowy haunts of night 
 life downtown. 
 
 Since my student and subsequent professional 
 career were prosaic, I leave them almost unmentioned 
 
 [97] 
 
98 The Fourth Sex. 
 
 throughout Part Three. I, however, always gave 
 them first place in my life. But I here confine myself 
 to what I experienced and learned while impersonating 
 a French doll-baby because it constitutes something 
 novel to most readers. 
 
 Indeed Parts Three, Four, and Five portray the 
 social life and diversions of the most cultured New 
 York coterie of THE third sex during the last decade 
 of the nineteenth century. For, while little has yet 
 been published about instinctive female-impersonators 
 because of the prudery of the sexually full-fledged, 
 they form (necessarily sub rosa) quite a large class of 
 society — about one out of every three hundred physical 
 males. During the last decade of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, the Fourteenth Street Rialto was their chief 
 stamping-ground in the New York metropolitan dis- 
 trict. I became acquainted with them because during 
 the decade indicated, I was myself in my prime as 
 a female-impersonator in two out of the three principal 
 bright-light quarters of the metropolitan district. 
 
 [There exists also A fourth sex, the gynanders. 
 But experience has not qualified me to describe them 
 in detail. That task awaits some brave, high-minded, 
 and brilliant physical female. See, however, chapter 
 on Gynanders in my Riddle of the Underworld.] 
 
 The Overworld has enjoined complete silence 
 about female-impersonators because of their thorough- 
 ly false view that any adolescent adopting the role must 
 do so from moral depravity. They argue: "If I my- 
 self adopted the role, it could only be through unspeak- 
 able depravity. Ergo, the same is true for every 
 male." They overlook the fact that Nature did not 
 
Female-Impersonation Instinctive. 99 
 
 make all anatomical males of like passions. What 
 would be moral depravity for one is not for another. 
 
 Instinctive female-impersonators are sexual 
 cripples from their mother's womb. They had no 
 choice in the matter. Thus they merit pity rather 
 than scorn. Further, since their impersonations 
 occasion no detriment to any one, but are a source of 
 much entertainment to their sexually full-fledged 
 associates, they are a positive ethical good. All benefi- 
 cent talents that the Creator has distributed among 
 mankind must have been meant for use — not for 
 strangling. 
 
 As to the ethical question, I myself, who from the 
 age of nineteen to thirty-one had an intensive career 
 as fairie — female-impersonator, can truthfully state, 
 on arrival in my late forties, that I was not once, dur- 
 ing that career, guilty of an irreligious or unethical 
 act — excepting alone that I seriously impaired my own 
 health. But it is doubtful whether the impairment 
 was permanent. In my late forties, my physical vigor 
 is not at a lower level compared with males of my own 
 age than it was during my childhood. My health has 
 always been delicate. 
 
 Numerous wives and mothers suffer in health 
 from the sex passion as much as I. If my having had 
 my health wrecked by it proves it immoral for me and 
 to be legally repressed, then the yielding to it by wedd- 
 ed pairs is equally immoral and to be interdicted. If 
 it be objected that the human race is perpetuated by 
 the latter, I answer that this consideration would only 
 permit to married couples a sex-union when off- 
 spring was the object — that is, for a cultured couple, 
 from one to three times throughout their married life. 
 
100 Depilation. 
 
 In the description of my own physique and psyche, 
 I have indicated the general characteristics of the ex- 
 treme type of androgynes foreordained to become 
 quasi-public female-impersonators. But the outstand- 
 ing feminesque physical stigmata of each "fairie" (as 
 they are commonly called in the United States) tend 
 to be sui generis. In one it is natural beardlessness 
 alone. In another, the possession of female breasts 
 alone. In a third, the female skeletal shape, particu- 
 larly an over-long spine, short legs, and broad pelvis. 
 In a fourth, natural soprano voice. Etc. 
 
 Whoever has beheld an instinctive female-imper- 
 sonator when keyed up, must confess that this type 
 are born actors — or "actresses," as they prefer to be 
 called. Their histrionic skill is not primarily the re- 
 sult of practice or instruction. 
 
 Their audiences have marvelled because the im- 
 personators' faces are devoid of any sign of beardal 
 hair. Usually the beard is eradicated. It is allowed 
 to grow for a full week in seclusion. By means of a 
 mask of depilatory wax, every hair is then pulled out 
 by the roots, the outer portion having become embed- 
 ded, like hair in wall-plaster. For three weeks, the 
 face is as glabrous as a baby's. Then the week's se- 
 clusion and the final excruciatingly painful yank of 
 the wax mask all over again. The process has no 
 permanent effect, either good or bad. 
 
 All the impersonators adopt a fancy feminine 
 name, as Pansy, Daisy, and Lily. Often the names 
 of living star actresses are adopted and "dragged 
 into the mud," as people say. For while the career 
 of a female-impersonator is a purely physiological and 
 
Obedience to Nature Gave Peace. 101 
 
 psychological phenomenon, it is incorrectly regarded 
 as deep-dyed immorality. 
 
 All impersonators belonging to the middle and 
 upper classes also choose a masculine alias, represented 
 in the Underworld to be their legal name. They do 
 not wish to risk disgrace to their family name. More- 
 over, on their sprees in the bright-light districts, they 
 are careful to wear nothing containing their every- 
 day initials. 
 
 Except for a few weeks, I myself was only an 
 avocational impersonator. I gave to it only three 
 hours a week, as compared with 109 waking hours to 
 my student (or later, professional) life. I did not 
 adopt the avocation until near the close of my sopho- 
 more year. Almost throughout the preceding twenty- 
 four months, however, I had fought violently against 
 almost irresistible tendencies to disappear for an 
 evening in the Underworld on a female-impersonation 
 spree. But my ultra-puritan education had injected 
 into me such a moral horror of female-impersonation 
 that I was able to resist the tendencies for two whole 
 years after the date that Nature ordained them to 
 begin. 
 
 The "French doll-baby" spirit had dwelt in my 
 brain since birth. Throughout my life down to nine- 
 teen, it had manifested itself strongly, although after 
 fourteen I had struggled to crucify it. At nineteen, it 
 refused longer to be suppressed. I (the puritan, book- 
 worm spirit in me) had to arrange a compromise. I 
 promised to yield my physical and mental powers to it 
 only one evening each week. And the doll-baby spirit 
 was satisfied. Previously I had been the most melan- 
 choly person in the university. But dating from the 
 
102 My Dual Personality. 
 
 compromise, my life flowed on peacefully and blissfully. 
 Only occasionally — moments while suffused with ambi- 
 tion to make a name for myself in the intellectual and 
 philanthropic world — would I turn against the doll- 
 baby spirit with abhorrence, and ask myself how I 
 could ever give place to it. 
 
 For the serious work of life, I realized that I must 
 practically strangle the feminine side of my duality 
 outside the three hours a week during which I con- 
 ceded to it full possession of my personality. While 
 at my every-day tasks, I sought to forget the doll-baby 
 spirit that dwelt in my brain side by side with the 
 scholar spirit. 
 
The Fairie Boy. 103 
 
 II. A Typical Female-Impersonation Spree. 
 
 The one evening a week on which I (the scholar- 
 spirit) surrendered, I called "going- on a female-im- 
 personation spree." The typical spree did not occur 
 until the December (1894) of my senior year. I had 
 become somewhat adept in the art of impersonation 
 through a year's apprenticeship in the Mulberry Street 
 Italian quarter. As that training has been detailed 
 in my Autobiography of an Androgyne and The 
 Riddle of the Underworld, I omit it here. 
 
 On the afternoon preceding a spree, I would be 
 overwhelmed with dread and melancholia. I dreaded 
 disclosure, which I realized would mean expulsion 
 from the university because of the full-fledged man's 
 horror of a sexual cripple. I dreaded possible dis- 
 figurement by blows — or even murder — by one of the 
 numerous prudes who detest extreme effeminacy in a 
 male (supposed). I was melancholy because about to 
 embark on something that my puritan training had 
 impressed me as in the highest degree disgraceful, and 
 that I secretly wished I did not have to undertake. 
 But to be contented and even happy for the following 
 week and to guarantee that tranquillity necessary for 
 the best scholarly success, the weekly spree was 
 unavoidable. 
 
 Only a handful of upper-class female-imperson- 
 ators adopt feminine attire for street wear. For my- 
 self (being a university student, and subsequently an 
 honored member of a learned profession) it was too 
 
104 Fairies Are Extreme Dressers. 
 
 risky. I merely kept some feminine finery locked up 
 in my room for occasional decoration of my person 
 while I gazed in the mirror. But during the eighteen 
 months that my sprees were staged in the Fourteenth 
 Street Rialto and the six years on or near military res- 
 ervations in New York's suburbs, my attire was as 
 fancy and flashy as a youth dare adopt. Fairies are 
 extreme dressers and excessively vain. To strange 
 adolescents whom I passed on the street I proclaimed 
 myself as a female-impersonator through always wear- 
 ing white kids and large red neck-bow with fringed 
 ends hanging down over my lapels. 
 
 I would set out from my lodgings with the feelings 
 of a soldier entering a terrific battle from which he 
 realizes he may never return. As the car carried me 
 farther and farther from where I staged the puritan 
 student life and nearer and nearer to where I staged 
 the "French doll-baby" life, my overwhelming melan- 
 cholia would gradually give way to a sense of gladness 
 that in a few minutes I would find myself again on 
 "Jennie June's" stamping-ground. I had left at 
 home all my masculinity (a very poor variety) . The 
 innate feminine, strangled for a week in order that I 
 might climb, round by round, the ladder to an honored 
 place in the learned world, now held complete sway. 
 
 During the last decade of the 19th century, the 
 Fourteenth Street Rialto ranked second only to the 
 "Tenderloin" as an amusement center in the entire 
 metropolitan district. While it still holds the same 
 rank in 1921, its present night life is only a shadow of 
 what it was. A quarter of a century ago, New York 
 was wide-open, whereas for more than a decade, the 
 lid has been down tight. Promenading the Rialto on 
 
Fourteenth Street Rialto, Stamping-Ground of the 
 Hermaphroclitoi 
 
 Stuyvesant Square, One of Jennie June's Stamping- 
 
 Grounds 
 
 (Usually the evening was spent on the bench where two girls 
 are seated in picture.) 
 
106 The Fourteenth Street Rialto. 
 
 an evening of 1921, the pedestrian would conclude that 
 no such phenomenon as sex attraction existed. But 
 during the period that I was an habitue, the Four- 
 teenth Street Rialto was as gay as European bright- 
 light districts, which I was fated to explore. 
 
 The Rialto is confined principally between Third 
 Avenue and Broadway. While I was an habitue, 
 theatres, museums for men only, drinking palaces, 
 gambling joints, and worse abounded. 
 
 On pleasant evenings, when the sidewalks were 
 thronged with smartly dressed adolescent pleasure 
 seekers, I would promenade — up and down, up and 
 down — until I chanced to meet a coterie of young 
 bloods who invited me to join them. Our evenings 
 would be spent in pool-rooms, gambling joints, beer 
 gardens of ill repute, or worse resorts. Nature made 
 me proof against the vices I there witnessed. My 
 only weakness was the craze for female-impersonation. 
 My greatest joy was to flaunt myself as a bisexual be- 
 fore those who did not know my identity. I realized 
 that every soul among my Rialto associates was turn- 
 ing his or her back on the Creator. But I was always 
 determined to give Him first place in my affections. 
 However, for fear of bringing reproach on religion if 
 / made myself its representative — /, a misunderstood 
 female-impersonator, whom even the Underworld in 
 general regarded as one of the most impious of hu- 
 mans — I never mentioned the theme except under ex- 
 traordinary circumstances. 
 
 If the weather were bad, I would immediately 
 enter a beer garden and call for sarsaparilla. I would 
 consume it in driblets while watching for the oppor- 
 
Female-Impersonators Popular. 107 
 
 tunity to join some tremendously virile bachelors out 
 for a lark. 
 
 On the typical evening I have chosen to describe 
 of my many passed in the Rialto, I happened to run 
 across several youthful Lotharios waiting in front of 
 a theatre for something "to turn up". Only one ad- 
 olescent "male" out of three thousand in New York 
 City adopts the role of quasi-public female-imperson- 
 ator. A Rialto habitue therefore does not often run 
 up against one. Judging by my own experience, a 
 female-impersonator proves an attraction of the first 
 order for young bloods having time hanging heavy on 
 their hands. Thus this coterie — as many others have 
 done — called out jubilantly on catching sight of me: 
 
 "Hello Jennie June !" "Hello sweetheart ! That 
 
 is what you want us to call you, isn't it?". . . . "Let me 
 introduce you to Mr. A and Mr. B. They have never 
 met a female-impersonator, and are dead anxious to 
 see you take off a girl." 
 
 "And you are Jennie June, are you?" A and B 
 exclaimed. "We have heard a lot about you and 
 longed to meet you." 
 
 "Bon soir, messieurs," I replied. I had a liking 
 for addressing chance-met beaux in a foreign tongue. 
 I happened to be the foremost linguist among the uni- 
 versity students. 
 
 "Bon soir, Jennie, bon soir!" 
 
 "Meine sehr geliebten junge Herren, wie geht's 
 bei Ihnen ?" I continued with a twinkle in my eye. 
 
 "Ganz gut," sounded the reply. New York is a 
 Babel. On an hour's promenade in the Rialto, conver- 
 sation in a score of languages would impinge on one's 
 
108 Female-Impersonators Gifted. 
 
 ear. Bright young men brought up in a New York for- 
 eign colony acquire a score of the commonest expres- 
 sions in several languages. 
 
 "I miei amici, siete amati da me," I next declared 
 in a third language. 
 
 "Pee-an-gou, savez? We don't understand Dago, 
 Jennie. Tell us in American how much you love us." 
 
 I reply in Spanish : "Esto es lo mejor que pode- 
 mos hacer. Hablemos ingles." 
 
 "Bert, Jennie seems to be a bright fellow — or girl 
 — doesn't she? All these impersonators seem to be 
 brainy. Jennie, I don't know whether to call you a 
 fellow or a girl. Which is proper?" 
 
 "Girl, of course," I replied with a smile. 
 
 "Well, fellows, Jennie" June is part he and part 
 she. He wears trousers, but she has breasts just like 
 a woman and wants us fellows to regard her as a girl." 
 
 "Well, Jennie, if you are a girl, why do you wear 
 breeches? And why don't you let your hair grow 
 long?" 
 
 "Because I have the misfortune to be only part 
 girl. I am only a girl incarnated in a boy's body. But 
 besides my girl's mind, my entire body is shaped very 
 much like a girl's and I possess her bone and muscular 
 systems. Because I am part boy, the law prohibits 
 to me my natural or instinctive apparel. But you will 
 be so kind as to overlook my not appearing before 
 you in gown and picture hat, won't you ? I will make 
 up for that lack by outwomaning woman in my actions. 
 It is my nature to give up all I have, and do all I can, 
 for the entertainment of heroes — as you manly fellows 
 seem to be." 
 
The Hotel Comfort. 109 
 
 "Jennie, let's walk around to the ladies' parlor 
 of the Hotel Comfort 1 and have a few drinks." 
 
 We arrived in an artistically furnished room 25 
 feet by 75. At one side was a bar from which waiters 
 continuously carried drinks to the fifty-odd couples 
 seated around the small ornamental tables which oc- 
 cupied most of the floor. Nearly all the patrons were 
 under thirty, and absolutely all, highfliers sexually. 
 The vast bulk merely smoked, drank, and "chinned." 
 Only a few were playing cards for money. All were 
 refined and orderly. I have never circulated among 
 more delightful people than I met frequently at the 
 Hotel Comfort. 
 
 I had become well acquainted with the proprietor 
 and all his employees. For more than a year the 
 "hotel" was substantially the home of my feminine 
 personality, "Jennie June." But this refined and lux- 
 urious "hotel" would have tolerated only a cultured 
 and outwardly modest female-impersonator. Most ex- 
 amples of that biological sport were far below the 
 standards of the Hotel Comfort, and would have been 
 barred. But I was looked upon as a personality likely 
 to attract a pecuniarily desirable class of patronage. 
 
 My five companions and I spent an hour sipping 
 beverages. 
 
 [While during my twelve years as quasi-public 
 female-impersonator, my companions always drank in- 
 toxicants, I always called for non-alcoholics. The lat- 
 ter's price was double in order to discourage the con- 
 sumption of temperance drinks. I had been brought 
 up to loathe alcoholics, and during my twelve years 
 
 1 Substitute for the real name of the pseudo-hotel. 
 
110 No Alcohol, No Venereal Disease. 
 
 intimacy with heavy drinkers, came to a more and 
 more rational loathing. 
 
 Alcoholics are by far the greatest curse of the 
 Caucasian race. I have had almost unequalled oppor- 
 tunities for studying venereal diseases. My twelve 
 years of having roues and filles de joies for bosom 
 friends taught me that the presence of alcohol in the 
 blood is the sine qua non of venereal disease. Perhaps 
 my greatest contribution to the betterment and hap- 
 piness of humanity is the epigram original with my- 
 self : No Alcohol, No Venereal Disease. But it is 
 necessary to be a total abstainer. Mere moderation 
 does not confer immunity. The total abstainer may 
 possibly contract venereal disease, but it is sure to be 
 benign, almost negligible, and inflicting no permanent 
 injury. Dr. Robert W. Shufeldt, who as army surgeon 
 had extensive experience in the treatment of venereal 
 disease, wrote in the Journal of Urology and Sex- 
 ology, 1917, page 458 : "In my opinion, alcohol bears 
 the responsibility more than any other single agent — 
 indeed more than all the others put together — for en- 
 suring venereal infection."] 
 
 "Jennie, why not take a cocktail instead of a. 
 lemonade? We want to warm you up. Then you will 
 give us some of your recitations and songs. Won't 
 you drink a few cocktails for my sake?" 
 
 "I would not put the poison into my system for 
 anybody ! I do not need that kind of stimulant. You 
 know what kind I need to get warmed up to declaiming 
 and singing! 
 
 " 'I am a-thirst, but not for wine ; 
 
 The stimulant I long for is divine; 
 
 Poured only from your eyes in mine ! 
 
Female-Impersonate Intoxication. Ill 
 
 I am a-cold, and lagging lame ; 
 Life creeps along my chilled frame ; 
 Your love will fan it into flame. 
 
 I am a-hungered, but the bread I want ; 
 The food that e'er my thoughts doth haunt; 
 Is your sweet speech, for which I pant !' * n 
 
 "If that is all the stimulant you need, Jennie, it 
 can easily be supplied." 
 
 We were the merriest party in the parlor. The at- 
 tentions of my beaux were having their usual effect. 
 To achieve my best success at female-impersonation, 
 the stimulus of an appreciative and responsive au- 
 dience of youthful Lotharios was necessary. Our 
 hilarity was more and more attracting the eyes and 
 ears of all other guests. Some recognized me as a 
 female-impersonator. Calls began to reach me: "O 
 you Jennie June, give us an impersonation of a prima 
 donna!" The old-timers were remarking to new 
 patrons of the "hostelry" : "The little fellow with the 
 red bow is a fairie !" 
 
 Hypnotized by the adulation of those whom I 
 looked upon as demigods, as well as by the well-dis- 
 posed attention of the other hundred-odd guests at- 
 tracted by my unique, yet fairly modest, behavior, I 
 broke into the "Old Oaken Bucket" — a song affording 
 unusual opportunity to display my masculine-feminine 
 tones: below middle A, baritone; from A upward, 
 alto; with an occasional soprano and tenor modulation 
 thrown in just to excite wonder. I fancy my singing 
 voice is unusual in its variety of possible modulation 
 
 i Decades ago I read in a newspaper this imperfectly 
 remembered lyric. Name of poet not published. 
 
112 Man and Woman in One Body. 
 
 as a result of my body being both male and female. 
 In my singing voice particularly, these two elements 
 are ever striving for the upper hand. One stanza each 
 of several songs then in vogue followed: "After the 
 Ball Was Over"; "Sweet Rosy O'Grady"; "Just Tell 
 Them That You Saw Me" ; etc. 
 
 Next I recited a dialogue, my naturally bland, sen- 
 timental, and caressing voice now aping a cry-baby 
 mademoiselle, and now a stern, hoarse-voiced he-man. 
 Now I burlesqued feminine airs and cadences ; and now 
 strove after the most virile and dare-devil effects. 
 
 I was, while the focus for all eyes, conscious only 
 of the joy of being alive and in the midst of an admir- 
 ing group. I experienced a feeling of exultation that 
 for a brief spell I was looked upon under my real char- 
 acter — a bisexual. I was intoxicated with delight be- 
 cause emancipated — though only for a few moments — 
 from a hated dissimulation and disguise, and enabled 
 to be myself. Assuredly another personality than that 
 of my every-day book-worm self was in possession of 
 my body and faculties. I realized I was the same / 
 who was one of the leaders in scholarship at the uni- 
 versity. At the same time, I realized I was doing 
 things incongruous with that position. 
 
 At midnight, I bade my convives a reluctant adieu. 
 Before boarding an elevated train, I turned several 
 corners abruptly and hid in the first dark doorway to 
 make sure of not being dogged. But no Rialto asso- 
 ciate ever did. After alighting from the train, I 
 adopted the same strategy, to make assurance doubly 
 sure. 1 
 
 1 I was dogged only three times in my many years of 
 leading a double life: (1) Several Stuyvesant Square clubmen 
 
Being "Dogged". 113 
 
 Arrived in my room, I first dropped to my knees 
 to thank Providence for restoration to my every-day 
 world. I rejoiced that the ordeal of a female-imper- 
 sonation spree was over for a week. But the following 
 days, while resting my mind for a moment from hard 
 study, I gloated over the memory of my latest asso- 
 ciations, as a member of the gentle sex, with the tre- 
 mendously virile type of adolescent. 
 
 succeeded, unbeknown to me, in boarding the same elevated 
 train. I discovered them only after I had descended to the 
 street. My refusal to proceed to my lodgings so incensed them 
 that they disfigured my face with blows. (2) I was dogged 
 again by several other Stuyvesant Square clubmen. I discovered 
 them before I boarded the train. Again my refusal to proceed 
 angered them to giving me a beating. [They beat me because 
 they had been taught that androgynes are monsters of depravity. 
 All were around twenty years old.] (3) I was dogged in 1918 
 by a ruffian of twenty-two, with whom I had talked confidential- 
 ly, but finally forsook because my usual test had shown him un- 
 trustworthy. He followed me for more than a mile, although I 
 turned several corners suddenly and stood in a doorway and 
 watched. But he had reckoned on my doing just that, and in 
 some mysterious way guarded against my discovering him. 
 He was evidently a super-crafty criminal. On straight stretches 
 of street, I lookea back half-a-dozen times, but saw nothing of 
 him. (Because he had always taken the opposite side of the 
 street and kept such a distance behind I could not recognize him, 
 while his own eyesight carried further than mine.) When I 
 arrived at my goal (fortunately this time an amusement resort 
 and not my home), he gave me one of the surprises of my life 
 by coming up to me. I fled from him in irrational terror. 
 
 Note.— See "Memories" in Part VIIL 
 
114 The Fairie Boy. 
 
 HI. The Gambler. 
 
 "Where is my wandering boy to-night — 
 
 The boy of my tenderest care, 
 The boy that was once my joy and light, 
 
 The child of my love and prayer?" 
 
 In chapter III I shall portray one of the most 
 remarkable of the Adonises that I met during my 18- 
 months Rialto career, to which the present Part 
 Three is devoted, and in chapter IV, the most remark- 
 able youthful Hercules. Other Adonises of the Rialto 
 are protrayed in my Riddle of the Underworld. 
 The remainder of the present book, to the end of Part 
 V, will describe some of the most remarkable ultra- 
 androgynes (female-impersonators) that I met in the 
 Rialto. For a description of my most noteworthy 
 "fallen angel" confidants, I refer to my Riddle, and 
 to my fourth book, now in preparation, Susa, which 
 gives the entire life of the Queen of the Rialto of the 
 middle of the last decade of the nineteenth century. 
 As I was fated to become the most widely known 
 female-impersonator of the Rialto, Susa was the most 
 widely known vampire. Two detested and cordially 
 loathed types, but actually not a hundredth as bad as 
 they had the name of being ! 
 
 Numerous Rialto pals were adolescent profes- 
 sional gamblers. Because of that, I have chosen to 
 devote an entire chapter to a characterization of the 
 type. More than that, the young blood forming the 
 subject of the present chapter was my "No. 1" friend 
 among the couple of hundred Lotharios with whom I 
 
New York's Beau Brummel. 115 
 
 mingled in the Rialto. He became my favorite be- 
 cause he was the most elegantly dressed — and close to 
 the handsomest — adolescent I ever met. Above all, 
 he possessed the most genial disposition. 
 
 Has the reader ever remarked that just that kind 
 of disposition generally goes hand in hand with deceit 
 and hypocrisy? Later — to my bitterest sorrow — the 
 hero-boy now being described was discovered to be 
 the greatest hypocrite I ever met. In January, 1895, 
 I made his acquaintance. For half-a-year he manifest- 
 ed the greatest affection — all feigned as I later found. 
 When he had wrung me dry, he — entirely unexpectedly 
 — flourished a loaded revolver around my head, and 
 cried : "If you ever speak to me again, or even come 
 into the same room, I will put a bullet through your 
 head !" 
 
 This quondam soul-mate had such a craze for ac- 
 quiring money — generally by foul means — as I have 
 never witnessed in another. He made it a condition 
 of our spending a couple of hours together that I put 
 into his palm a five-dollar bill. But though I could 
 get plenty of other company of his type gratis, I was 
 so fascinated with him that I never gave a second 
 thought to the self-sacrifice that such gifts demanded 
 during my student days. While promenading the 
 streets with him, I would, every other minute, glance 
 into his face, reflecting: "The handsomest and best 
 dressed young fellow of the Rialto is mine." While 
 we were seated in a theatre together, I would often 
 gaze into his face instead of at the players, reflect- 
 ing: "New York's Beau Brummel is my soul- 
 mate." For no soft hair, no rosebud cheeks in a 
 Note.— See "Recollection" in Part VIII. 
 
116 Apostrophe to Lost Soahnate. 
 
 male, no arched eyebrows — ever surpassed those of 
 the Adonis now being described. He was perfection 
 in face, head, and body. He was perfection in dress. 
 He was perfection in disposition — ONLY he was 
 
 ULTRA-DECEITFUL. 
 
 ******** * * 
 
 Buddie McDonald! Whom for over twenty- 
 five years I have not seen or had news of ! I am here 
 addressing you because it is the only possible way to 
 get through a message. If these lines should ever 
 fall under your eyes, and you should, in this chapter, 
 recognize yourself — somewhat covered in order to hide 
 our identities — I wish to tell you that I have through 
 the years always granted you first place in my heart 
 after my mother alone, and if we could ever run across 
 one another, I still stand ready to enslave myself to 
 you, notwithstanding you doubtless have lost (because 
 age deals no differently with you than with all other 
 sons and daughters of Adam) nearly all your litheness 
 and charm. But I still love you for what you were 
 in your earlier twenties. Throughout a quarter of a 
 century I have been longing and waiting for a chance 
 encounter with you. Many times have I eyed every 
 man passed in New York's crowds hoping to recognize 
 your face. Nothing would I like better than to spend 
 my declining years knit to your genial personality and 
 heroic, grand-aired spirit. I freely pardon your past 
 treachery — though it almost drove me insane — if only 
 you would condescend to let my soul be knit to yours 
 until death do us part! 
 
 Buddie McDonald! The most precious of all 
 names ! If it were my idol's legal name, I would not 
 
The Gambler's Antecedents. 117 
 
 disclose it. It was the alias he used in the Rialto and 
 the only name I knew him by. 
 
 Buddie told me that he was born and brought up 
 on a farm near Lake Ontario. His people were Metho- 
 dists. He had always gone to Sunday school and Ep- 
 worth league, because his parents required it. For 
 he was a black sheep by birth — the only one in his little 
 rural community. When nineteen, the seventeen-year 
 daughter of a neighbor appeared with her parents be- 
 fore a justice of the peace. Buddie lived with his child- 
 wife only three days and then stole away for parts un- 
 known. What pangs the poor girl must have suffered 
 thus to lose a genuine Adonis — in beauty one man out 
 of a thousand — to the arms of the demimonde! She 
 had doubtless been comforting herself and congratu- 
 lating herself that she had won for life as her help- 
 meet the most bewitching young blood of the com- 
 munity. And after just three days to be forever left 
 in the lurch ! 
 
 "Buddie McDonald" immediately bobbed up in the 
 Rialto under that alias. In the Rialto ! At that time 
 one of the two chief amusement and gambling centers 
 of the Western Continent, the magnet for the black 
 sheep of pious families all over the United States. 
 He immediately adopted the profession of card sharp- 
 er, being endowed with the peculiar mentality neces- 
 sary. 
 
 While we were pals, he was twenty-two — just 
 a year older than myself. From ten to midnight one 
 evening each week, I dogged him in one of the half- 
 dozen gambling joints among which he divided his 
 "working" hours. 
 
118 Fairie a Bachelor of Arts. 
 
 I was too much of a goody-goody ever to gamble 
 myself. I would merely sit for hours as spectator. It 
 was intense pleasure merely to have under my eyes the 
 type of adolescent that sows wild oats. 
 
 Among my associates in the Rialto resorts were 
 youthful actors playing at the several theatres, race- 
 track book-makers, wealthy adolescents who spent 
 their evenings sipping gross pleasures, and high-fliers 
 of the feminine persuasion — at that date as thick in 
 the Rialto as flies in summer around an open jug of 
 molasses. 
 
 I was now in my third year of leading a double 
 life. My every-day circle was without suspicion. 
 Outside my one evening per week in the Rialto, I led 
 a most industrious student life, even winning prizes. 
 I had already been awarded the bachelor's degree cum 
 laude and was in my first year of graduate study. Of 
 course I had never revealed to any Rialto associate 
 that I was a university student. I was known there 
 merely as "Jennie June," while the few who took the 
 trouble to inquire my legal name never questioned 
 "Ralph Werther." And my three most intimate 
 Lothario friends of the Rialto were too busy evenings 
 — Martin and Paul, 1 chasing chippies, and Buddie, 
 victimizing youthful greenhorns — to investigate where 
 I spent my time while not in the Rialto. They have 
 each asked me where I lived. I gave a fictitious ad- 
 dress, hoping they would not investigate. And they 
 never did. And my three most intimate androgyne 
 friends — Roland Reeves, Eunice, and Phyllis — were, 
 like myself, living a double life incognito, and thus 
 
 i Martin and Paul are depicted in THE RIDDLE OF THE 
 UNDERWORLD. 
 
"Things Are Not What They Seem." 119 
 
 were the more inclined to respect my disinclination to 
 refer to my every-day life. 
 
 To the university circle I thus continued the "in- 
 nocent" from whose view Heaven had mercifully shut 
 off the seamy side of life, particularly the Underworld. 
 They declared they never saw any one with such weak 
 sexuality! But I actually knew a thousand times as 
 much about passion and crime as any one of them. 
 Some complained because I "never associated with 
 men and learned human nature" ! But I secretly knew 
 human nature far better than any of them. They 
 thought that my feminine predilections and lack of 
 worldly wisdom (seeming) were due to my being a 
 recluse ! And I was a recluse so far as concerned uni- 
 versity social affairs. For I elected to take my diver- 
 sions as a mademoiselle — not as a gallant. 
 
 But to return to Buddie : I have picked out for 
 description that one of my numerous evenings spent 
 in part with him which best illustrates his character 
 and our relations. Afternoons and evenings he hung 
 around fashionable hotel lobbies and exhibition halls 
 to scrape acquaintance with moderately wealthy and 
 sportily inclined Reubs making their first trip to New 
 York. With his unmatched geniality and hypocrisy, 
 he was decidedly successful in getting a line aboard 
 some "sport" from upstate, and taking him in tow. 
 For with Buddie, it was "Brother, this" and "Brother, 
 that". A large proportion of the Reubs whom Buddie 
 condescended to buttonhole congratulated themselves 
 doubtless on their good luck in happening on such a 
 friendly New Yorker — a gentleman of leisure and a 
 big roll of yellow backs (which Buddie always took 
 pains to wave before the eyes of Reubs, a manoeuvre 
 
120 Gambling a Master Passion. 
 
 tending to hypnotise them) who condescended to show 
 them the sights of the metropolis, and, above all, take 
 them where they could quadruple and quintuple their 
 funds in a single evening. The passion for enrichment 
 by a stroke of luck is, after woman and wine, the chief 
 pitfall for "he-men. " An appeal to this craze in Reubs 
 ambitious to be "sports" has good prospects of success 
 for brainy metropolitan prestidigitators. 
 
 On Buddie's and my entering into a solemn con- 
 tract — very similar to a marriage bond — to be "best 
 friends," he agreed to reserve one entire evening each 
 week for me alone. But it was only the fourth that I 
 had to sit in a Fourteenth Street restaurant for two 
 long hours waiting in vain. I was -wiping my tear- 
 bedimmed eyes four times a minute. Other diners 
 probably thought I was experiencing some overwhelm- 
 ing bereavement. 
 
 At ten I made the rounds of the gambling joints 
 frequented by my soul-mate. I finally caught sight 
 of his wondrous blonde hair and peachlike cheeks in 
 the very last — as always happens — of his half-dozen 
 stamping-grounds. In the last decade of the nine- 
 teenth century, it was pre-eminently New York's 
 Monte Carlo (which name I give it in this book) . The 
 walls were paneled in rosewood. Every six feet a 
 heavy gilt-framed plate-glass mirror reached halfway 
 tt> the 15-foot ceiling. The latter was painted with 
 Cupids and Venuses, in all sorts of poses, amid fleecy 
 clouds floating in such a blue sky as is actually beheld 
 only in Italy. The myriads of crystal prisms pendent 
 from the huge chandeliers emitted all the colors of the 
 spectrum. The floor was mosaic — in such exquisite 
 patterns that it seemed a sin to set foot on it. The 
 
In New York's Monte Carlo. 121 
 
 ebony furniture was inlaid with mother-of-pearl in 
 floral patterns. 
 
 I rushed to Buddie's side noiselessly because, with 
 three other smartly dressed young bloods, he was ab- 
 sorbed in a game. I knelt beside my hero-boy with 
 head against his arm. 
 
 When the hand was played out, Buddie, throwing 
 at me the sweetest of smiles, addressed the only one of 
 the four who was a stranger: "Mr. Myers, let me in- 
 troduce Jennie June, the female-impersonator. I am 
 used to her hanging around while we fellows are play- 
 ing. Do not let her presence distract you. Jennie 
 and I call each other 'Best Friend.' Perhaps you 
 never before ran up against a person who is one-third 
 man, one-third woman, and one-third infant. Thst 
 explains why she nestles up against me so affection- 
 ately." 
 
 But Mr. Myers appeared to be unutterably shock- 
 ed. Particularly since I was in male attire. He ap- 
 peared incredulous. He had never even dreamed that 
 a third sex exists. 
 
 After an hour Buddie said : "Jennie, take my keys, 
 go to my room, and wait for me there. Because I will 
 not get home until long after midnight." 
 
 On arrival he exclaimed: "Jennie, what do you 
 think of your new friend, Mr. Abraham Myers, the 
 Beau Brummel of Myersville upstate, who is enjoying 
 his first visit to our village?" 
 
 "I think, Buddie, that before to-night he had never 
 been in any place worse than a church social. His 
 evening in the Monte Carlo must have been an eye- 
 
122 Crooks Are Boastful. 
 
 opener. Whenever my gaze fell on the poor innocent, 
 the words of the Bible went through my head : 'He is 
 led as a lamb to the slaughter ! And as a sheep before 
 her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth !' I 
 am sorry my hero-boy stoops to take advantage of an 
 unsophisticated Reub ! ' 
 
 While we ate our midnight lunch, Buddie confided 
 his evening's adventure. I was always inquisitive 
 about the ways and habits of the tremendously virile — 
 how they looked upon the mystery we call "life" — and 
 habitually put to my numerous soulmates a long list of 
 questions in case they did not spontaneously overflow. 
 But it is an earmark of crooks to be garrulous with 
 their soulmates. The former are proud of their 
 sharpwittedness and gloat in unburdening their minds 
 to some one they think they can trust. Their charac- 
 teristic bragging to confidants is one of the chief means 
 by which many of them finally fall within the toils of 
 the law. 
 
 Secondly, Buddie was my soulmate. At that 
 date, we felt ourselves husband and wife. For I 
 am myself fundamentally a woman, though pos- 
 sessing the male primary determinants. The re- 
 lationship of knit souls — amalgamation of two 
 separate personalities of opposite sex into ONE 
 human being — I have discovered tends to mutual 
 confidences. I had already several times been 
 in Buddie's presence when he had an intended victim 
 (always a Reub) in tow, and saw through everything 
 even if he had not told me. If it be asked how I, pre- 
 tending to be of high morals, could associate with 
 sharpers, I answer : Love IS BLIND. In my subsequent 
 Bowery period, described in my Autobiography of an 
 
Fairies Best Stool Pigeons. 123 
 
 Androgyne and The Riddle of the Underworld, I 
 was knit into one being with youthful burglars, who, 
 to whet my admiration for themselves, have enter- 
 tained me with accounts of their burgling houses and 
 demonstrated their truthfulness by exhibiting terrible 
 scars from gunshot wounds suffered as they were 
 fleeing from a burglary they had "made a mess of." 
 I would never have thought of contributing in any way 
 to bring them to justice; first, because I slavishly 
 adored them, and secondly, because I knew I would be 
 murdered if they should ever entertain the least sus- 
 picion that I would "peach." 
 
 Experience taught me, during my six years in 
 New York's Underworld, that crooks are particularly 
 prone to confess to a fairie intimate. For they con- 
 sidered fairies (under the legal ban of ten years' im- 
 prisonment in New York) far worse criminals and far 
 worse defiers of the law than themselves. Fairies — 
 they thought — would not dare "peach." 
 
 Fairies would serve as the best stool pigeons for 
 ferreting out thieves, just as keen filles de joie are em- 
 ployed as detectives. 
 
 Buddie McDonald had already received many 
 proofs that I idolized him and would never do anything 
 to his detriment. True: five months later he did 
 "shake" me definitely and emphatically. But this was 
 because he had discovered he had wrung out of me all 
 the money he could; he had become financially inde- 
 pendent beyond his wildest dreams ; and I had come to 
 be a terrible bore through hanging around his room 
 several times a week and demonstrating myself in- 
 satiable. 
 
124 The Abraham Myers Adventure. 
 
 I summarize, as nearly as I can recollect, Buddie's 
 
 account of the Abraham Myers adventure. 
 ******** * * 
 
 It was on account of my roping Abraham in, 
 Jennie, that I had to cause you that terrible crying 
 spell at the restaurant. But you will sure forgive me 
 when you come to realize that it is not every afternoon 
 that a fellow comes across a hundred-dollar wad on the 
 floor of Madison Square Garden waiting for some 
 bloke to pick her up. 
 
 While Abe and I were watching the poor devils 
 spinning around the track, I slyly pumped out that he 
 is the only son and hope of Jonathan Myers, owner of 
 the knitting-mill that put Myersville on the map. 
 Having once been a hayseed myself, Jennie, I know 
 what pulls strong with them. So, to get a line aboard 
 Abe, I first gave him an hour of soft soap. "Yes, 
 brother, I spent the summer of 1892 up in Squeedunk 
 in your part of the state. It sure is a garden of Eden. 
 . . . .How did this year's potato crop pan out?. . . .And 
 I myself know everything from A to Z about breaking 
 in a colt. I was raised on a farm up in New 
 Hampshire." 
 
 After Abe showed he thought I am the best fellow 
 ever and I had found him to be an easy mark, it was 
 time to discuss money. "Money, brother! You have 
 a little and you love it. If only a fellow has money, 
 he can go everywhere and have everything. Wouldn't 
 you like me to show where you can take your money, 
 
 AND IN THE SHAKE OF A LAMB'S TAIL MAKE MORE 
 MONEY OUT OF IT?" 
 
 Abraham right away bit hard. So I dropped the 
 subject for an hour. I didn't want him to smell a 
 
Blarney Triumphant. 125 
 
 rat. And my silence would all the more make him 
 hanker after the magic place where one could see his 
 dough swell five-fold at a sitting. 
 
 After the first hour of blarney, I asked Abe to let 
 me show him some of the sights of the Tenderloin, 
 which all red-blooded Reubs hanker to see. "I swan !" 
 he exclaimed. "I never believed such charming and 
 handsome ladies existed!" I next took him to the 
 Waldorf to dine. Of course I did not let him pay out a 
 cent. Only one red-blooded hay-seed out of a hundred 
 will, at the last, balk at sitting down at the card table, 
 where I can get every penny back with interest at 
 10,000 per cent. We sharpwitted fellows have to take 
 those chances, Jennie. 
 
 As we swilled such grub as Abe had never even 
 smelled of, he rubbernecked at the wonderful frescoes 
 and stared at the polished marble columns which 
 made the great dining-room like a forest. "This place 
 is like what I have dreamed heaven to be!" he broke 
 out over and over again. He was so soft! "You are 
 awful good, Mr. McDonald, to bring me to see all these 
 heavenly things. I never believed there lived such an 
 awf ul good fellow !".... Hah-hah-hah, Jennie ! He 
 was clean daft ! 
 
 But, Jennie, I would never humbug a friend that 
 way. Specially you, because you and I are "best 
 friends." You see, Jennie, Abe Myers was a stranger 
 with a big wad. I was loading him with favors and 
 pulling the wool over his eyes because my plan was to 
 wring him dry before I let him get out of my hands. 
 Such tricks are what we smarter straight men of 
 Fourteenth Street are for. We have to live off the 
 greenhorns 
 
126 How They Milk Cows on Fourteenth Street. 
 
 Don't, don't begin to chew the rag, Jennie! My 
 only sorrow is that I haven't enough dough. Abe 
 Myers' old man has barrels full. Abe will not suffer 
 more than a few hours on account of the eighty-odd 
 bucks I wrung out of him. 
 
 At nine we boarded a car for Fourteenth Street. 
 We went into the bar-room of the Monte Carlo and 
 sent a few glasses of champagne chasing after the 
 many already swallowed. The poor innocent said 
 his head swam ! Hah-hah ! He acted bashful-like as 
 if he had never before tasted a drop. But he was too 
 scart of being set down as a sissie to balk at another, 
 and still another, glass while I waited for Pedro and 
 Tracy. For I had phoned them to meet me at the 
 Monte Carlo at nine to milk a cow. For they are my 
 regular partners, Jennie. They haven't the brains 
 to get a line aboard a Reub, but know the ropes when 
 I am at their elbow to give them their cue. We have 
 an understanding that I will later make good their 
 evening's losses, or take my share of the winnings 
 that I throw into their hands. I guarantee that they 
 will each be to the good by one-tenth of the night's 
 clean-up; my share, for furnishing the brains and 
 taking all the risk, being eight-tenths. 
 
 Of course we made it look as if Pedro and Tracy 
 dropped in by chance. All three of us did our best 
 to give Abraham the happiest hour of his life. When 
 the time was ripe, I said: "Fellows, what do you say 
 to a hand at cards?" 
 
 Pedro and Tracy seconded my motion. I watched 
 Abe's face to learn what I could count on and how far 
 I dared go. It looked awful sheepish, as you said, 
 Jennie. But I must say for Abraham that he is red- 
 
A "Reub" Seeing New York. 127 
 
 blooded and would not back down in any manly under- 
 taking. Like ninety-nine out of every hundred Reubs 
 wanting to be sports, Abe Myers wouldn't balk even 
 though he felt in his bones he was being led down to 
 hell. But he barely lagged after us into the card-room. 
 But this was probably on account of his Methodist 
 bringing up, like my own. He could not possibly have 
 thought we were plotting to fleece him. As we 
 swilled grub in the Waldorf, I had given his 
 hand a hearty shake when he told me he was a 
 member of the Epworth League. I said I also was, 
 as really when I lived back home. Besides all three of 
 us had patted him on the back and lionized him. 
 There were aristocrats all about. And the Monte 
 Carlo is such a high-class joint, decorated like Vander- 
 bilt's palace. Abe probably thought — like he said 
 about the ceilings in the Waldorf : "Sure I ought not to 
 mind the loss of a few bucks. It is worth that to see 
 all this heavenly art, so much beyond anything I ever 
 believed existed on earth. Besides Mr. McDonald 
 has been awf ully good ! Spent a mint of money on me ! 
 He sure couldn't let any harm befall me !" 
 
 For, Jennie, just that is the secret of getting the 
 best of strangers. Treat them just lovely until the 
 moment comes to pluck out their feathers. 
 
 We were soon buried in faro, as you saw while 
 with us, Jennie. I played the banker and the others 
 staked their money against me upon the order in which 
 the cards would lie as dealt from the pack. The play 
 ran on for over two hours. We spoke hardly a word. 
 First along we each staked a dollar on each lay- 
 out. But later five. For the first hour — while you were 
 watching, Jennie — I turned things Abe's way a little. 
 
128 "Death to the Traitor." 
 
 I wanted to get him awfully interested. When the 
 time came to throw things in the other direction, I 
 had to send you home, Jennie, for fear you would make 
 some remark about my sleight-of-hand that would put 
 everything in bad. Of course if Abe had not been 
 awful green at cards, he would have got wise too. 
 
 And, Jennie, I remind you this once for all time. 
 The saying is: "Death to the traitor!" And I know 
 that you love life better than death. See how easy it 
 would be for me to grab your throat and in a few min- 
 utes you would be a goner without being able even to 
 make a whisper. But I know you could never do any- 
 thing but help along your "hero-boy." 
 
 After midnight, Jennie, there happened what I 
 had been looking for. With trembling hands, Abe 
 opened up his wallet to let us see the three one-dollar 
 bills still lining it. He said awful plucky: "Fellows, 
 I am almost at the end of my tether. I need this bit 
 until I can get some dough from dad." I felt sorry 
 for the poor kid, patted him on the back, and handed 
 him ten dollars from my own wad. I said we would 
 play till he won back his losses. But at last he balked. 
 So I said : "Let's go to the bar-room and have a drink." 
 
 Pedro, Tracy, and myself spit out soft soap over 
 our drinks for a few minutes. For some time I had 
 seen that Abraham was awful worried. He now hard- 
 ly opened his mouth except to answer a question. He 
 looked as if he were all the time saying to himself: 
 "I'll never get into another scrape like this again !" 
 But he did not dare even breathe a whisper about us 
 being sharpers. We were three against him alone, and 
 even sweller dressed. Besides, being a stranger in New 
 York, he lacked sense. 
 
A Sadder, but Wiser "Reub." 129 
 
 I judged it time to escort him to his hotel, because 
 he needed some one to steady him. He looked a wreck. 
 Because he was not used to champagne and all. We 
 shook hands with Pedro and Tracy, and boarded a car 
 for the Grand Union, where all the middle-class Reubs 
 put up. Even when we were alone in front of his 
 hotel, he did not have the nerve to call me down. I 
 have fleeced Reubs who have given me a good punch 
 in the mug when they got me alone. Abe must have 
 thought I am straight. 
 
 I shook his hand good-night, patted him on the 
 back for the last time, and said I would call this coming 
 evening to give him a chance to win back his money. 
 Of course I never expected to keep the engagement. 
 I don't suppose Abe did either. As soon as he got 
 inside his hotel, I sneaked away as fast as my legs 
 would carry me. For a week, I shall have to keep 
 away from the Monte Carlo. 
 
130 The Fairie Boy. 
 
 IV. A Stuyvesant Square Pick-up. 
 
 It is August, 1895 — several weeks after Buddie 
 McDonald had left me in the lurch, as he had his legal 
 wife, and as he probably through life went on desert- 
 ing quondam soulmates when having no more use for 
 them. Furthermore, during this single summer that 
 I frequented the Rialto, I found it a barren stamping- 
 ground for myself. Nearly all my Lotharios were of 
 the moneyed class that go out of the city for the heated 
 term, or at least while away their evenings at a shore 
 resort in the suburbs. For I did not drift with solid 
 business young men, but with those who sought an 
 easy life. The book-makers were at Saratoga, the 
 vaudeville artists at seaside theatres. Even profes- 
 sional gamblers preferred Saratoga or Long Branch 
 during the months that fools with money to burn went 
 to those places rather than ,to little old Fourteenth 
 Street. 
 
 But in June I was fortunate in being introduced 
 to some refined "young fellows" living near Stuy- 
 vesant Square, five minutes walk from the Rialto. 
 Business or a slim pocketbook kept them in the city. 
 I therefore formed the habit of staging my imperson- 
 ation sprees in the Square — a park of about six acres. 
 Within four weeks I had been introduced to several 
 score young bloods — so many because all belonged to 
 a neighboring club the talk of which I came to be on 
 my advent because of my ultra-androgynism and fe- 
 male-impersonation. The majority liked to flirt with 
 
An Unrivaled Hercules. 131 
 
 me an hour in the park as if I were a full-flecl^ed 
 mademoiselle. I was always clothed as a youth, al- 
 though exceptionally loud, as fairies are wont. But 
 the present work will pass over my relations with the 
 Stuyvesant Square club-men because described in my 
 Autobiography of an Androgyne. 
 
 In that August occurred one of the most eventful 
 evenings of my twelve years' career as overt female- 
 impersonator. I had promenaded every path in the 
 Square without running across any clubman — very un- 
 usual on a balmy evening. Therefore just before dark 
 I seated myself next to the most attractive stranger in 
 the park, where two thousand people were enjoying 
 the cool of a scorching day. He looked to be twenty, 
 was rather shabbily clad, but clean. It was not his 
 features, but his powerful and well proportioned fig- 
 ure, that attracted me. His hair was red — a favorite 
 color for neckties, but the very last I would choose for 
 a beau's chevelure. His face, while well formed, was 
 close to the very worst among the more than one 
 thousand young bachelors with whom I have coquetted. 
 His eyebrows and lashes were blonde and barely vis- 
 ible. His complexion resembled a sheet of faded 
 pink muslin — a solid color all over, not rosebud or 
 peachlike, as the lamented Buddie McDonald's. Par- 
 ticularly his cheeks were covered with pimples, 
 common in redhaired men, so that one wonders how 
 they shave. But because of his unapproached bone 
 and muscular development visible even through his 
 clothes, I did not like him a whit the less on account 
 of his pigmentary defects. 
 
 For several months after that night, I fell in love, 
 at first sight, with nearly every red-headed adolescent 
 
132 Influence of Environment. 
 
 I ran across, particularly if his cheeks were covered 
 with pimples. 
 
 In order to ascertain the trustworthiness, good- 
 heartedness, and liberalmindedness of the Hercules, I 
 first drew him out craftily by a long series of ques- 
 tions. Even people in my every-day world have given 
 me the palm for inquisitiveness. I expected to put 
 myself in the power of Hercules and needed to find 
 out all about him. I was always ultra-wary about 
 falling into a trap, as I already had several times in 
 the Underworld. Androgynes are murdered every 
 few months in New York merely because of intense 
 hatred of effeminacy instilled by education in the 
 breasts of full-fledged males. 
 
 I learned Hercules' entire history — providing 
 what he narrated was true. To my joy he told me he 
 had been reared in a village in the Mohawk valley. 
 Through heart-to-heart talks with hundreds of strange 
 young bloods in New York's Underworld I discovered 
 that boyhood environment makes a vast difference in 
 adult honesty and altruism. The country-bred adoles- 
 cent manual-laborer is apt to be far less vile-mouthed 
 and pugnacious, and far less likely to assault and rob 
 one of Nature's step-children than a young-blood prod- 
 uct of city slums. 
 
 Only after I had been able to form a favorable 
 judgment of Hercules' disposition, I began to disclose, 
 by my talk, that I was an androgyne. From my dress 
 and mannerisms, however, any city-bred youth would 
 have already judged my sexual status. Hercules later 
 told me he had, but had feared saying something offen- 
 sive. He said he had been impatient for me to declare 
 myself. 
 
Author's Flirtations Mushy. 133 
 
 The following conversation serves to illustrate 
 and analyze the hero-worship of the androgyne. It 
 is admittedly mushy. The question is whether the 
 reader wants the mushy or the untrue. Ordinarily 
 conversation with a sexual counterpart made me silly. 
 All my flirtations were mushy. The following phrase- 
 ology is very close to the actual except that I have 
 semi-translated Harvey's dialect into ordinary Eng- 
 lish. Further, the reader must educate himself 
 to judge justly even that with which, as he reads, he 
 does not like to identify himself or make his own sen- 
 timent. For example, two confidential, Platonic lit- 
 erary friends told me that my original songs published 
 in my Autobiography of an Androgyne were 
 "sickening." They could not sympathize with the an- 
 drogyne sentiments and therefore the songs were 
 "shoddy." Likewise the following conversation must 
 be judged objectively and the reader's verdict be based 
 on absolute reason, not on personal bias — not on the 
 basis of the reader's ability to put himself in the place 
 of the Hercules or myself. It is a conversation to be 
 analyzed scientifically. 
 
 "Beau, see how much bigger your hands are than 
 mine! And how horny the palms! I bet you would 
 give a good account of yourself in a fight!" 
 
 "I've had lessons in pugilism. Besides I come 
 from a strong-built family. Me father's piano -mover 
 and me only brother steeple-Jack. Meself has worked 
 as riveter on sky-scrapers." 
 
 "So you have wielded a sledge-hammer!" I ex- 
 claimed enthusiastically because of his more and more 
 marvellous revelations. 
 
134 Hero-worship. 
 
 "All day long while steel-worker's helper on the 
 sky-scrapers." 
 
 "O you are such a wonderful young fellow! 
 Wonderful alone in your being brave enough to mount 
 the sky-scraper skeletons! And still more wonderful 
 in possessing the muscle necessary for wielding a 
 sledge-hammer all day ! May I feel your biceps ? I am 
 anxious to have my hands on the very muscle that 
 slung the sledge-hammer !" 
 
 "Anything at all !" 
 
 "0 what a biceps! Like a tremendous boil pro- 
 truding out of your arm except that it is hard as steel. 
 Among the scores of Strong Hanses whose biceps I 
 have been privileged to pinch, you are the muscular 
 prodigy! 1 You must be a terrible slugger! I pity 
 your opponent! Only a pyramid of jelly after you 
 got through with him! Do you know, Mr. Strong 
 Hans, that I have fallen in love with your biceps?" 
 
 "That's a funny thin' ter fall in love with! But 
 just feel me chest muscles and leg muscles." 
 
 "They are steel !" I cried in ecstacy. "Because of 
 your being a muscular prodigy, I am driven beside my- 
 self in hero-worship ! Do you know what the word 
 'worship' means? It means that I could prostrate my- 
 self with lips to your dirty shoes, and cry out, over and 
 over again, forever, forever, your wonderful endow- 
 ments! I could forever call you Sledge-hammer 
 
 1 In the summer of 1921 I twice saw moving pictures of 
 Jack Dempsey arching his naked biceps. I was thirty feet 
 away and his size was magnified at least twice. I carefully 
 watched for comparison with Harvey Green. The protuberance 
 was not equal to Harvey's, who was far from being approached 
 by any of the scores of sluggers whose biceps I have pinched. 
 I can never forget Harvey's mountains of biceps. 
 
A Rare Find. 135 
 
 Wielder! Personification of Strength! Incarnation 
 of Power! Man of Iron! Mighty Man of 
 Valor ! Mighty Man of Renown ! Heaven wills that 
 I, a poor weakling, bow low in adoration of a muscular 
 prodigy!" 
 
 "You said it ! I've got the build of a pugilist. But 
 it's meself as needs ter go ter the dentist ter git me 
 teeth filled and have n't the price." 
 
 "I'll attend to that. Because you are a rare find, 
 Mr. Strong Hans! You are one young fellow out of 
 ten thousand. I must n't lose track of you. Let me 
 tell you the plans that have been going through my 
 head since I met you. Nature has made it impossible 
 for me ever to marry a woman. For I am myself real- 
 ly a girl whom Nature has disguised as a fellow. I 
 only dress as a fellow because the law ignorantly re- 
 quires it. Nature meant that I should go through life 
 with a husband — not a wife, as ignorant society com- 
 mands. For some years it has been my dream to take 
 to live under the same roof, as long as God leaves me 
 in this world, a young fellow who approaches my 
 ideal. And you do as hardly another I ever met. And 
 I want you to live with me as my husband. When you 
 reach twenty-five, you may also marry a physical 
 woman, and she will keep house for us. I shall always 
 regard your and her children as my own. God has 
 given me much above the average brain power, and I 
 can earn money enough to support all. You will never 
 have a care. You need never work unless you want 
 to. For I will be your slave. Because you possess in 
 by far the highest degree the bodily and mental en- 
 dowment that are for me a magnet. You will be pay- 
 
136 Full-fledged' s Instincts Equally Unxsthetic. 
 
 ing for all I do by merely allowing me to gaze at your 
 marvellous build a few minutes every day. 
 
 "You — like every one else — probably think I am 
 a very bad sort of person. But perhaps you will dis- 
 cover some counterbalancing good qualities. In reality 
 my bad side is no worse than that [sexuality] of all 
 other men. The virile call me 'Child of the Devil!' 
 The pot has always liked to call the kettle black. A 
 person always considers right and highminded what- 
 ever he himself is inclined to, and wrong and devilish 
 whatever others are inclined to. Because people are 
 thus in love with themselves and their own tendencies, 
 they will not forgive my own bad side. Not because 
 it is in any way harmful; merely because it is so ex- 
 ceptional. 
 
 "I have the means to support you from this even- 
 ing on. 1 I guarantee you as good a start in life as 
 young fellow ever had. Wouldn't you like to become 
 a lawyer or physician? Then why not tell me your 
 true name and address, lest I lose you? Because until 
 I know you thoroughly, I can not reveal my own legal 
 name and where I live. Because people misunderstand 
 so terribly women-men like myself." 
 
 "Harvey Green, Eagle Hotel, Third Avenue." 
 
 "I detest 'Harvey' because two acquaintances of 
 that name were such poor specimens of men. Since 
 you are to be my own personal sledge-hammer-slinger, 
 I change your name to 'Tom.' That is the most mascu- 
 line of names, and because you are the most masculine 
 of young fellows — indeed the Supreme Man — you must 
 
 1 I had graduated more than a year before and was earning 
 a good salary during this summer vacation between my first 
 and second post-graduate years. 
 
Common Type of Sexual Insanity. 137 
 
 be decorated with it. For you appear to be even more 
 than man. A wonderful visitant from some other 
 world. A super-man ! 
 
 "I am afraid, Tom, you may be only a dream. I 
 am afraid you may be only an apparition with me a 
 brief hour, then to return, like Lohengrin, to the 
 heavenly realm where the hero is immeasurably be- 
 yond anything we have on earth. 
 
 "So from to-night on, your legal first name is 
 Tom.' And after I have tried you out, you will take 
 my own legal surname. But my pet name is 'Prince 
 Wonderful!' Can you feel, Prince Wonderful, that 
 you charm me as a serpent a bird that it creeps upon 
 in order to swallow? I know I am doing something 
 crazy in letting you swallow me; in turning my back 
 on all my own pleasures and prospects in order that 
 you may get more out of life. For I would rather be 
 the instrument through which a demigod like yourself 
 enjoys some good before my eyes than myself to enjoy 
 it. It is crazy of me ; but my instincts lead that way, 
 and I have the will to act that way. Muscular prodigy I 
 Sky-scraper dare-devil! Your prodigious strength 
 and muscles cement me to you as with hoops of steel !" 
 
 We soon took a stroll of half-a-mile to the East 
 River, to a neighborhood of gas-houses, closed factor- 
 ies, and storeyards. No one ventured here after dark 
 except homeless gutter-snipes in summer to sleep. I 
 myself would not have ventured at night anywhere 
 near these dingy and desolate blocks except under the 
 protection of a Strong Hans. 
 
 On female-impersonation sprees in the Rialto and 
 Stuyvesant Square, I was always richly clad and wore 
 jewelry. While during my year's female-impersona- 
 
138 The Ultra-Unexpected Happens. 
 
 tion apprenticeship on Mulberry Street my pockets 
 were rifled every night, I had not now for nearly a 
 year suffered the theft of even a copper. And why 
 should I entertain even the shadow of a suspicion of 
 "Tom" whom I wholeheartedly accepted as an un- 
 sophisticated youth recently from the Mohawk valley 
 and to whom I had pledged the usufruct of my fairly 
 good earning capacity to enable him to live like a 
 nabob? For more than an hour, on the park bench, he 
 had demonstrated himself supergenial. He had 
 seemed so glad and so grateful over what I had prom- 
 ised : To lift him from the slums to an honored pro- 
 fessional career. The story of his life did contain 
 some inconsistencies but I realized it only too late. 
 
 As soon as we arrived in an unlighted stone-yard 
 and there was not another soul within hearing — at 
 least we had seen no one for the last five hundred feet 
 — Harvey Green suddenly changed to just the opposite 
 of his supergenial and ultra-grateful mask. Only at 
 the moment that he had me completely at his mercy 
 did he disclose himself as a dyed-in-the-wool criminal 
 — a fiend who would never give a second thought to 
 having just committed a murder. 
 
 Since I had expected to take him under my own 
 roof and acquaint him with my every-day professional 
 personality, I had not gone to the extremes of frivolous 
 female-impersonation customary before young bloods 
 who would never meet me in every-day life. I had 
 feared I would forfeit his respect. Thus I had bidden 
 him call me "Ralph" — not "Jennie." 
 
 "Ralph, what a ya think when I say I've served 
 time in Elmira Reformatory? I kin prove what kinder 
 man I am ! Reach your hand here and feel this terrible 
 
A Seance with a Burglar. 139 
 
 scar. And then reach it here and feel this other. 
 Ralph, I got these scars from bein' shot while runnin' 
 away after havin' made a mess of burglin' houses in 
 villages. For it's better ter be shot than caught. And 
 I did n't dare go ter any doctor. My pal dressed the 
 wounds the best he could, and it hurt awful — I tell 
 you ! And both times the buggers bled and bled till 
 I close ter croaked. But luck was with me; me guts 
 escaped the pepperin'. And after I recovered from 
 loss of blood and after the wounds began ter heal, I 
 was as strong and husky as you see me to-night. 
 
 "But just to-night I happened ter be broke. I was 
 just loafin' in the park waitin' for a sissie like you, 
 Ralph, ter walk inter me trap, so I could git hold of 
 some dough." 
 
 "Harvey," I could only stammer, being next to 
 speechless because of surprise and terror, "I am 
 stunned at what you say. I never believed you could 
 so deceive me. Can I say nothing to bring you to 
 your senses? Don't you realize you have ten thousand 
 times more to gain by being my friend?" 
 
 "Ralph, did n't yez ever hear a bird in hand's 
 worth two in bush? Besides I could never be friend 
 ter feller of your nature, Ralph! My hand's agin' 
 you, Ralph! Because I've a criminal record, Ralph, 
 every man's hand's agin' me. And my hand's agin' 
 every man. I'm a man without any heart. I'd as soon 
 put a bullet through a bloke as look at him. 
 
 "No, Ralph, the burglar's life I've chosen kin alone 
 afford the excitement I need. Up me sleeve, I did n't 
 take the least stock in all your soft soap as we sat in 
 the park. Your pet names and promises mean nothin' 
 ter me at all ! You sure must take me for a softy in 
 
140 
 
 Method of Robbery. 
 
 me promisin' ter live with a feller like yourself! 
 You're now goin' ter have a taste of what use I have 
 for that kind of feller ! Hand out your money ! Hand 
 out your money!" 
 
 As he spoke, he clutched a shoulder with one hand 
 and clenched the other in my face. I handed over my 
 wallet. 
 
 "Here! I'll relieve yez of that watch and chain. 
 .... And off with that ring ! . . . . Now take off every 
 stitch so I kin see if you've any concealed bills." 
 
 "You're welcome to all I have on me, Harvey, and 
 I love you too much to prosecute. Only please, please, 
 let me depart unharmed! I forgive everything! If 
 only you will let me depart unharmed, I will immedi- 
 
 Neighborhood Where Harvey Green Thought He 
 "Finished" Jennie June 
 
Author Robbed Two Hundred Times. 141 
 
 ately take you around to my room and put into your 
 hand a hundred dollars I have locked in my desk." 
 
 "I could n't do that. It'd be too risky." 
 
 While we argued, I undressed meekly and in un- 
 speakable terror. I realized I might be experiencing 
 my last five minutes of life. I took as much time as 
 possible in the hope that a watchman might chance 
 along. But why a watchman in a store-yard of paving 
 stones? 
 
 "I guess now I've got everythin' of value, though 
 not as much as expected. You sneak, why did n't yez 
 have more bills onter your carcass?" 
 
 On female-impersonation sprees in Stuyvesant 
 Square, I carried less than ten dollars. But judging 
 from my rich attire and not knowing I had set out 
 from home just for such a spree, Harvey must doubt- 
 less have thought I had on me a big roll. The present 
 is only one of the most remarkable of about two hun- 
 dred adventures I have had with robbers, the thievishly 
 inclined regularly preying on androgynes because 
 knowing the latter are themselves outlaws and thus 
 unable to complain to the police. 
 
 Incensed over the disappointing size of his haul, 
 Harvey continued : "And now, you sneak, I've got yez 
 at me mercy! There's not a man within hearin' ! Shut 
 your d — throat, or you'll be worse off yet ! Hold down 
 your hands from in front of your mug! Hold down 
 your hands ! You bastard ! You cannibal ! Your 
 nature's so disgustin' that every rightminded man 
 would agree your face oughter be used as a butcher's 
 choppin' block ! And it's me own great joy ter do the 
 job!" 
 
 Only about so much of the fiend's ranting was I 
 
142 Experiencing Death. 
 
 able to catch. After I had received several sledge- 
 hammer blows in the face, fallen to the ground, been 
 kicked and stamped upon, I entirely lost consciousness. 
 Even while I still heard his ranting, I hardly noticed 
 any pain. I merely thought I was dying. I was fully 
 reconciled, and prayed: "Father, into Thy hands I 
 commend my spirit !" 
 
 The next thing of which I was conscious was vio- 
 lent retching — due to internal injuries. In his youth- 
 ful verdancy, the fiend had probably thought he had 
 finished me. But Providence overruled, as in a number 
 of subsequent similar assaults when I was snatched 
 from the very jaws of death, whereas every few 
 months I see in the papers that some less fortunate 
 androgyne has not lived to tell the tale. 
 
 I was at first puzzled as to whether I was waking 
 up on the earthly plane or in another world. Until 
 I fully recovered my senses, I lay inert. Then I slowly 
 dressed and limped away, having to rest on the curb 
 every five hundred feet. I searched out a street foun- 
 tain to bathe my bloodstained face and try to counter- 
 act the swelling and discoloration. For, most of all, 
 I feared arousing the suspicions of my every-day circle. 
 
 I then boarded a car for home, begging my fare. 
 In its regular hiding place in a stone wall of a neigh- 
 boring park, I obtained the key to the street door of 
 my boarding house. 1 Fortunately without encounter- 
 ing anybody, I mounted the several flights of stairs 
 and secured my room-key from its hiding place. On 
 
 1 On one spree, when I left the key in my pocket, it had 
 been stolen out of meanness, necessitating the embarrassment, 
 and risk of suspicion, of having to ring at midnight for 
 admission. 
 
Struggling to Save Reason. 143 
 
 arrival in my own snug harbor, the first thing I did — 
 as always — was to fall to my knees and bless Provi- 
 dence for permitting me to see home again. 
 
 For several hours, I could not sleep. Every mo- 
 ment I felt as if I would lapse into insane raving. 
 Every moment I besought God to show mercy on a 
 persecuted outcast. I reflected on my lot : To go 
 through life as a cordially hated bisexual. That was 
 my cross, and I repeated over and over again — in my 
 struggle to save myself from insanity — the identic 
 prayer that I had at fifteen repeated over and over 
 again on the night I had consecrated myself, and been 
 consecrated by the brethren of the puritan church to 
 which I then belonged, to be a preacher of the Gospel : 
 
 "Jesus, I my cross have taken, 
 
 All to leave and follow Thee ; 
 Naked, poor, despised, forsaken, 
 
 Thou from hence my all shalt be: 
 Perish every fond ambition, 
 
 All I've sought and hoped and known ; 
 Yet how rich is my condition, 
 
 God and heaven are still my own !" 
 
 Immediately following later similar assaults, I 
 have had to have my wounds dressed by a physician 
 before seeking my room, and on one occasion had to 
 enter a hospital. But on this occasion I waited until 
 the following morning to summon my physician. He 
 made one significant remark: "It would be worse 
 than useless for you to try to prosecute your assailant. 
 The court would immediately turn around and prose- 
 cute you as a felon !" 
 
 For two weeks I had to keep to my room. Never 
 
144 My Visage the Most Marred. 
 
 in all my life have I seen such a swollen and discolored 
 face; with one exception, and that exception died a 
 few days later as a result of his terrible blows in the 
 face. I told my landlady I had been in a fight defend- 
 ing a woman from her drunken husband. I telephoned 
 my office that I was slightly indisposed. Thus empha- 
 sized so no business associate would call. 1 
 
 After two weeks, when my face had become 
 somewhat presentable, I ventured to the office still 
 retaining only a black eye. "In my room in the dark, 
 I struck the edge of the eye-socket on a chair spindle." 
 I doubt whether all believed me, but none proved so 
 impolite as to ask embarrassing questions. 2 
 ******** * * 
 
 But Harvey Green! I here address you in case 
 your eyes should ever fall on these lines. I shall re- 
 member you to my dying day as occupying third or 
 fourth place among the hundreds of hero-boys with 
 whom Providence permitted me to commune. I never 
 
 1 In a later catastrophe, one did call. I was compelled to 
 tell the truth, but he proved sympathetic and respected my 
 confidences. He subsequently asked his physician about homo- 
 sexuality and was informed it was deepest moral depravity 
 and merited no sympathy. He himself happened to be one of 
 the most broadminded of men. He remarked that physicians 
 as a class are narrow-minded since most have not taken a 
 liberal-arts course. 
 
 2 In a later scrape, after being laid up for a week, I ven- 
 tured to my large publishing office with practically no skin on 
 my nose, that member having a week before been badly 
 smashed. My physician had furnished me with the explanation 
 that he had applied a mustard plaster for a cold and the nose 
 resulted! But the better joke was that simultaneously another 
 university-trained androgyne working in the same room was 
 limping around with a crutch. He said he had been thrown off 
 a horse, but I never doubted he had been crippled by some 
 sexually full-fledged brute as a punishment for his androgynism. 
 
Apostrophe to the Supreme Man. 145 
 
 met your equal in strength and muscle. Whenever I 
 think of you, the words, Supreme Man, come into my 
 mind. If I ever run across and recognize you after 
 the lapse of more than a quarter of a century, I shall 
 merely step up behind — where your eyes can not recog- 
 nize me — and call: "Supreme Man!" "Supreme 
 Man!" Then, without yet seeing me, you will 
 recognize "Ralph" to be behind you ; because no one 
 else has probably thought to call you "Supreme Man" ; 
 because no one else could ever have worshipped you 
 as I! 
 
 Poor deluded youth that you were in 1895! I 
 almost weep whenever I reflect what you have missed 
 in life through your poor judgment in robbing, and 
 even aiming to murder, your would-be benefactor. For 
 a few dollars worth of trinkets and for the satisfac- 
 tion of torturing effeminacy, you turned your back on 
 benefits to which could be attributed a money value of 
 at least ten thousand dollars. But I freely forgive. 
 Like the soldiers who crucified the world's Savior, you 
 did not know what you were doing. 
 
146 The Fairie Boy. 
 
 V. Evenings at Paresis Hall. 
 
 During the last decade of the nineteenth century, 
 the headquarters for avocational female-impersonators 
 of the upper and middle classes was "Paresis Hall," 
 on Fourth Avenue several blocks south of Fourteenth 
 Street. In front was a modest bar-room; behind, a 
 small beer-garden. The two floors above were divided 
 into small rooms for rent. In 1921 I visited the site, 
 as well as that of the "Hotel" Comfort (the two Rialto 
 resorts with which I was most intimately identified) 
 in order to take photographs for publication in this 
 book, but found both structures supplanted. 
 
 Paresis Hall bore almost the worst reputation of 
 any resort of New York's Underworld. Preachers in 
 New York pulpits of the decade would thunder Philip- 
 pics against the "Hall," referring to it in bated breath 
 as "Sodom !" They were laboring under a fundamen- 
 tal misapprehension. But even while I was an habitue, 
 the church and the press carried on such a war against 
 the resort that the "not-care-a-damn" politicians who 
 ruled little old New York had finally to stage a spectac- 
 ular raid. After this, the resort, though continuing 
 in business (because of political influence), turned the 
 cold shoulder on androgynes and tolerated the presence 
 of none in feminine garb. 
 
 But there existed little justification for the 
 police's "jumping on" the "Hall" as a sop to puritan 
 sentiment. Culturally and ethically, its distinctive 
 clientele ranked high. Their only offence — but such 
 
Is Bisexuality the Worst of Crimes? 147 
 
 a grave one as to cause sexually full-fledged Pharisees 
 to lift up their own rotten hands in holy horror — was, 
 as indicated, female-impersonation during their even- 
 ings at the resort. A psychological and not an ethical 
 phenomenon ! For ethically the "Hall's" distinctive 
 clientele were congenital goody-goodies, incapable (by 
 disposition) of ever inflicting the least detriment on a 
 single soul. They were of the type in the United 
 States, by every-day associates totally ignorant of the 
 secret sexual practices of Nature's step-children, de- 
 nominated "innocents ;" and in France, "little Jesuses" 
 even though in that country their sexual character is 
 an open book, since there the sexual appetite is re- 
 garded as no more shameworthy than the alimentary. 
 But the "Hall's" distinctive clientele were bitterly 
 hated, and finally scattered by the police, merely be- 
 cause of their congenital bisexuality. The sexually 
 full-fledged were crying for blood (of innocents), as 
 did the "unco' good" in the days of witch-burning. 
 Bisexuals must be crushed — right or wrong ! The sub- 
 ject does not permit investigation ! The fact that it 
 is race suicide justifies the denial of all mercy! Let 
 Juggernaut's car crush out their lives! 
 
 It was Nathan's parable of the ewe lamb all over 
 again. (Second Book of Samuel, chapter 12.) The 
 full-fledged had innumerable opportunities for the sat- 
 isfaction of their instincts. Androgynes had only "the 
 Hall" with the exception of three or four slum resorts 
 frequented by only the lowest class of bisexuals who 
 had never known anything better than slum life. 
 
 Why deprive cultured androgynes of their solitary 
 rendezvous in the New York metropolitan district and 
 
148 Homosexuals No Worse Than Heterosexuals. 
 
 give carte blanche to the thousands of similar hetero- 
 sexual resorts? 
 
 Paresis Hall was as innocuous as any sex resort. 
 Its existence really brought not the least detriment to 
 any one or to the social body as a whole. More than 
 that : It was a necessary safety-valve to the social 
 body. It is not in the power of every adult to settle 
 down for life in the monogamous and monandrous 
 love-nest ordained for all by our leaders of thought. 
 For example : The existence of Paresis Hall was due 
 chiefly to the fact that in about one out of every one- 
 hundred-and-fifty presumed males, the internal testic- 
 ular secretion has failed to be of the right consistency. 
 
 While in this book I use the resort's popular name, 
 androgyne habitues always abhorred it, saying simply 
 "the Hall." The full nickname arose in part because 
 the numerous full-fledged male visitors — it was one of 
 the "sights" for out-of-towners who hired a guide to 
 take them through New York's Underworld— thought 
 the bisexuals, who were its main feature, must be in- 
 sane in stooping to female-impersonation. They un- 
 derstood "paresis" to be the general medical term for 
 "insanity." The name also in part arose because in 
 those days even the medical profession were obsessed 
 with the superstition that a virile man's association 
 with an androgyne induced paresis in the former, it 
 not yet having been discovered that this type of in- 
 sanity is a rare aftermath of syphilis. 
 
 By means of an introduction of the reader to sev- 
 eral androgyne patrons of Paresis Hall, I aim to dem- 
 onstrate that instinctive female-impersonation has no 
 relation to brain lesions, dementia praecox, or other 
 psychic disease. The prevalent diagnosis, by phy- 
 
Cause of Androgynism. 149 
 
 sicians, of androgynism as insanity is as rational as 
 for a male alienist to pronounce all women insane be- 
 cause their psyche differs radically from his own. As 
 already stated, androgynism is a mere matter of ar- 
 rested development, due to imperfect internal testicu- 
 lar secretion, in the natural sex differentiation that 
 begins in the early foetus and ends at puberty. This 
 arrest has for its result an adult homo more or less 
 bisexual — a sexual intermediate, whose existence the 
 bigotry of the leaders of thought has hitherto prevent- 
 ed their recognizing. 
 
 At the university, the student is taught all about 
 the anatomy of the frog, but the prevalent view among 
 the leaders of thought that everything connected with 
 sex is taboo has prevented even the professors of phy- 
 siology from investigating androgynism, which touch- 
 es the social body so intimately. They have turned 
 their backs because "the subject leaves a bad taste in 
 the mouth !" 
 
 You milk-and-water hypocrites! Is it nothing to 
 you that innocent androgynes are pining in prison an 
 aggregate of thousands of years, and being continually 
 murdered by prudes, like Harvey Green, because you 
 have taught them that no punishment is too bad for 
 so-called "homosexuality"? For prudery is common 
 to some ultra-criminals and to the leaders of thought. 1 
 In the sight of God, you latter, when deliberately re- 
 fusing to hearken to the wailing of bitterly persecuted 
 
 1 Prudery is one of the foremost earmarks oi anaphrodites 
 and the mildly virile, to which classes nearly all the leaders of 
 thought belong. The trait is completely absent from the more 
 virile, as well as androgynes. Some of the more virile, as 
 Harvey Green, are prudes only as to homosexuality because 
 taught that fellators ought to be killed. 
 
150 Leaders of Thought Are Murderers. 
 
 androgynes, are morally on a par with Harvey Green 
 and the murderers of X, Y, and "Jimmie Q", the latter 
 being three bisexuals whose cases are outlined at the 
 close of this volume. 
 
 Paresis Hall was never my own headquarters. I 
 visited it only now and then. I had too early become 
 wedded to the "Hotel" Comfort. Moreover, I wandered 
 more widely, and in some respects flaunted my andro- 
 gynism to a greater extent, than any other female- 
 impersonator of my day. I took greater chances than 
 any other, except in the appearing in public places in 
 feminine apparel, but was never arrested in the Rialto 
 because always careful never to render myself liable. 
 Never for a moment did I forget the possibility of 
 being arrested. I was even hypersensitive in this mat- 
 ter. A common dream was that of being arrested. 
 But this hypersensitiveness probably saved me, since 
 others of my type were continuously being arrested 
 and sent to the penitentiary. But the cultured andro- 
 gyne is almost never caught by the police. Only those 
 of poor mentality. 
 
 On one of my earliest visits to Paresis Hall — about 
 January, 1895 — I seated myself alone at one of 
 the tables. I had only recently learned that it was the 
 androgyne headquarters — or "fairie" as it was called 
 at the time. Since Nature had consigned me to that 
 class, I was anxious to meet as many examples as pos- 
 sible. As I took my seat, I did not recognize a single 
 acquaintance among the several score young bloods, 
 soubrettes, and androgynes chatting and drinking in 
 the beer-garden. 
 
 In a few minutes, three short, smooth-faced young 
 men approached and introduced themselves as Roland 
 
Earmarks of Androgynism. 151 
 
 Reeves, Manon Lescaut, and Prince Pansy — aliases, 
 because few refined androgynes would be so rash as 
 to betray their legal name in the Underworld. Not 
 alone from their names, but also from their loud ap- 
 parel, the timbre of their voices, their frail physique, 
 and their feminesque mannerisms, I discerned they 
 were androgynes. Indeed effeminacy stuck out all 
 over Prince Pansy. Manon Lescaut's only conspicu- 
 ous anatomical feminesqueness was extraordinary 
 breadth of hips. While Reeves' trunk and legs were 
 not so feminine, he excelled in womanly features, with 
 such marine-blue eyes and pink-peony cheeks as any 
 beholder regretted should be wasted on a member (?) 
 of the sterner sex. Moreover, Reeves alone, of the two 
 score ultra-androgynes that I at different times met 
 at Paresis Hall, was naturally beardless. 
 
 While Roland, Manon, and the "Prince" looked 
 to be between twenty and twenty-five, I later ascer- 
 tained the first mentioned was thirty-seven. As al- 
 ready observed, perennial youth is an earmark of 
 ultra-androgynism. 
 
 Roland was chief speaker. The essence of his 
 remarks was something like the following: "Mr. 
 Werther — or Jennie June, as doubtless you prefer to 
 be addressed — I have seen you at the Hotel Comfort, 
 but you were always engaged. A score of us have 
 formed a little club, the Cercle Hermaphroditos. 
 For we need to unite for defense against the world's 
 bitter persecution of bisexuals. We care to admit only 
 extreme types — such as like to doll themselves up in 
 feminine finery. We sympathize with, but do not care 
 to be intimate with, the mild types, some of whom you 
 
152 The Cercle Hermaphroditos. 
 
 see here to-night even wearing a disgusting beard! 
 Of course they do not wear it out of liking. They 
 merely consider it a lesser evil than the horrible razor 
 or excruciating wax-mask. 
 
 "We ourselves are in the detested trousers because 
 having only just arrived. We keep our feminine ward- 
 robe in lockers upstairs so that our every-day circles 
 can not suspect us of female-impersonation. For they 
 have such an irrational horror of it !" 
 
 On the basis of different visits to an upper room 
 permanently rented by the Cercle Hermaphroditos, I 
 am going to build up a typical hour's conversation in 
 order to disclose into what channels the thoughts of 
 ultra-androgynes run when half-a-score find them- 
 selves together. The reason for its unnatural ring is 
 that I omit the nine-tenths that were prattle, retaining 
 only the cream that I consider of scientific value. 
 
 It was about eight o'clock on an evening of April, 
 1895. Some of the hermaphroditoi were still in male 
 apparel ; some changing to feminine evening dress and 
 busy with padding and the powder-puff ; some in their 
 completed evening toilette ready to descend to the 
 beer-garden below to await a young-blood friend. 
 
 I do not recall that a single hermaphroditos was 
 man enough to use tobacco, or even to spit. They af- 
 fected foreign languages, particularly French. I re- 
 call one whose favorite method in beginning a conver- 
 sation was : "Mes cheris,qu' est ce que c' est que vous 
 savez de nouvelles?" 
 
 A second: "Have you observed the new styles? 
 
Androgyne Talk. 153 
 
 Very narrow skirts, 1 and very large hats. The ma- 
 terial saved on the skirt goes into the chapeau." 
 
 "Nothing could be more beautiful," Angelo-Phyl- 
 lis, the most effeminate of the hermaphroditoi, opined 
 softly and sweetly, "than a feminine face framed in 
 a picture hat set sidewise, with rim reaching below the 
 shoulders. How I do like to stalk Fourteenth Street 
 myself with such a chapeau ! 2 How the young fellows 
 stare and throw remarks after me! I am glad the 
 petite turbans are going into the rag-bag. And what 
 low necks and short arms the new evening dresses are 
 showing ! And the material hardly more than cobweb ! 
 One could almost hide an up-to-date corsage in the 
 fist." 
 
 "You seem, Phyllis, to be an expert on lingerie." 
 "My woman friends tell me I have the best eye for 
 color effects they ever heard of. Millinery happens to 
 be my business. A star actress whom I happen to 
 know always asks me to accompany her to the mod- 
 iste's. I must practically pick out all her robes, as 
 well as hats — including the way they are to be made 
 up. Just the sight of the artistic fabrics, as they are 
 unrolled by the saleswoman, is an exquisite delight. 
 My mind becomes crowded with emotions, and on the 
 spur of the moment I could pen a lyric sur les etoffes 
 jolies that any ladies' magazine would publish .... The 
 
 1 In the last decade of the nineteenth century also, there 
 existed a feminine craze for skirts as narrow as a pant-leg. 
 "Merry Widow" hats also had their day then. But in 1921 for 
 the first time in Christendom, respectable women have been 
 crazy to display their bare breasts, bare arms, and next-to-nude 
 legs in the crowded streets. Respectable women have to-day 
 adopted for street wear the garb, for exclusive brothel wear, 
 of filles de joie of a quarter of a century ago. 
 
 2 See "French Doll Baby" in Part VIII. 
 
154 A Gynander's Fate. 
 
 stupidity of some women! This actress has just di- 
 vorced her husband and is looking around for a new 
 alliance. If I happened to have been born a marrying 
 man, I could make her my wife, although all the front- 
 row bald-pates are crazy after her. She has given 
 every hint — everything except an actual proposal. 
 But if I did let her marry me, the morning following 
 the bridal night, she would apply to the court for an 
 annulment. She does not even suspect the existence of 
 pseudo-men." 
 
 Another : "It is strange how often a girl falls in 
 love with us women-men. I myself have had three 
 proposals. Girls are particularly prone to fall in love 
 with members of their own sex disguised as men. Of 
 course we are really only girls ourselves whom Nature 
 has disguised as men. Particularly, rather mannish 
 
 women fall in love with us Mollie Coddles." 
 
 * * * * * * * * * * 
 
 Phyllis: "That reminds me of a young heiress 1 
 whom I knew. Perhaps you read in the papers two 
 years ago how a New York young woman disappeared, 
 and the utmost efforts of the police were not rewarded 
 with the least trace. She was of that mannish type. 
 For months she was the pest of my life. I still have 
 a big pack of letters and poems — all sickening — which 
 she mailed me. 
 
 "I myself have no doubt of the fate of the poor 
 girl. When the papers were full of rumors and hy- 
 potheses about her, I repeatedly wrote my theory to 
 her father. When he ignored my letters, I gave the 
 
 1 This anecdote deals with only one of a number of similar 
 occurrences in New York. Gynanders, as well as androgynes, 
 are doomed to suffer murder at the hands of hare-brained 
 prudes because of the false teaching of the leaders of thought. 
 
Gynanders Love Androgynes. 155 
 
 police my theory. They likewise thought it absurd 
 and refused to investigate along the lines I suggested. 
 
 "When some mannish women find it impossible 
 to marry an effeminate man, they adopt some petite 
 cry-baby woman as their soul-mate. The papers sta- 
 ted that the last trace of Mollie Dale was her carrying 
 away from O'Neil's several purchases. The latter 
 immediately struck me as such alone as a gallant would 
 buy to present his lady-love. When I told the police, 
 they said: 'Absurd! Who ever heard of one woman 
 being in love with another!' 
 
 "On leaving O'Neil's, Mollie Dale absolutely drop- 
 ped out of sight for all time. It was as if the earth 
 had suddenly yawned for her body and closed again so 
 rapidly as to be unseen by the people nearby. Or as 
 if she, absent-minded, had stepped into an open sewer 
 man-hole and no one happened at the moment to have 
 his eyes on the spot. 
 
 "My theory, hermaphroditoi, is that Mollie went 
 right from O'Neil's to her cry-baby chum's. Probably 
 within walking distance, because every soul in New 
 York was asked through the newspapers over and over 
 again if they had met on any public conveyance the 
 morning of Mollie's dropping out of sight a young lady 
 of her description, so detailed as to give even the 
 pattern of her shoes, besides her much published 
 photographs. Her disappearance was at the time the 
 seven-days wonder of New York and every one was 
 discussing it. 
 
 "The rule with men-women 1 — as with us women- 
 
 1 The scientific names "androgyne" and "gynander" evidence 
 a blunder of their coiner. The order of their components is 
 the reverse of their English colloquial equivalents. 
 
156 Solution of Mollie's Disapvearance. 
 
 men — is never to breathe to any one of their every-day 
 circle a word about their sweethearts because of the 
 misunderstanding and horror evidenced by people ig- 
 norant of psychology. As a rule the soul-mates of us 
 better-class bisexuals belong to a much lower social 
 stratum. Very likely Mollie's lived in one of the thou- 
 sands of tumbledown tenements within walking dis- 
 tance of O'Neil's. 
 
 "According to my theory, hermaphroditoi — and I 
 have seen a hundred times more of life than the aver- 
 age man, and possess some sense notwithstanding 
 people not knowing me well set me down as only a 
 high-grade idiot because of my outward frivolousness 
 and an unfortunate infantile carriage — the cry-baby's 
 husband or father had only just learned of what he, as 
 well as ninety-nine out of every hundred men, mis- 
 takenly regarded as the horribly corrupting influence 
 of the poor martyr Mollie on the hare-brained cry- 
 baby. Ignorant that men-women are victims of birth 
 and that their so-called 'depravity' brings not the least 
 harm to any one, and insanely angry with Mollie into 
 the bargain, he that very morning bludgeoned her in 
 his apartment. And he happened to succeed in dis- 
 posing of the corpse. 
 
 "I thought of Mollie when last week the papers 
 told about an unrecognizable female body, bent double, 
 having been found in a trunk filled with salt that for 
 two years had rested unclaimed in the trunk-room of 
 the third-class Hotel X — just the type that a tenement- 
 dweller would select to harbor such a trunk. The 
 murderer was evidently a meat-packer, familiar with 
 the processes of salting down. 
 
 "In such strange ways a continuous string of both 
 
Man's Prudery Causes Many Murders. 157 
 
 men-women and women-men are being struck down in 
 New York for no other reason than loathing for those 
 born bisexual. And public opinion forbids the publi- 
 cation of the facts of bisexuality, which, if generally 
 known, would put an end to these mysterious murders 
 of innocents." 
 
 ******** * * 
 
 "Hello, Mith Nighty!" several called as one of 
 the tallest, oldest, and most brunette of the hermaphro- 
 ditoi entered the Cercle's dressing-room. The andro- 
 gyne who had adopted the name of a romantic woman 
 had, during his twenties, before becoming thick-set, 
 been a female-impersonator on the vaudeville stage. 
 
 "Mith Nighty !" one of the youngest hermaphro- 
 ditoi shouted in a falsetto. "Queenie and I want you 
 to coach us in female-impersonation. Next Friday at 
 the Masked Ball we make our debut as public female- 
 impersonators." 
 
 A senior: "The world would call our hobby in- 
 sanity. But the explanation is that we were created 
 psychic females, who yearn for the dress and role of 
 that sex — to feel skirts flapping about our ankles — 
 and nevertheless Nature has been so cruel as to incar- 
 nate our woman-souls in the abhorred male body." 
 
 Another: "But other than in us women-men, the 
 male figure is infinitely more artistic than the female. 
 The only disgusting thing in man is the beardal 
 growth. I can tolerate in a beau a small moustache 
 only, but prefer him clean-shaven. But feminine 
 breasts are the very badge of beastliness! You, of 
 course, excepted, Ralph-Jennie. The short, fat, knock- 
 kneed feminine legs are monstrosities ! If you"ll par- 
 
158 Common Androgyne Practices. 
 
 don me for saying it, Phyllis. On the other hand, the 
 muscles of an athlete compel the attention." 
 
 Later it chanced that Roland Reeves and myself 
 entered into a soft-spoken dialogue: "Ralph, do you 
 know any woman-man whom we ought to get into the 
 Cercle?" 
 
 "Four! But they do not realize anybody is wise 
 outside the young athlete each has selected as chum. 
 No one but another woman-man, or a full-fledged man 
 who had read Krafft-Ebing, 1 would ever suspect them. 
 Their public conduct is always the height of propriety. 
 One of them even makes it a practice to boast of ex- 
 cesses cum femina — to ward off suspicion, for he has 
 always shunned females as one would the plague. But 
 on the basis of self-knowledge, we women-men easily 
 recognize our own kind. I need only hear the voice 
 and glimpse the features and figure. 
 
 "But none of the four ever visits the Underworld. 
 They do not feel the need. Their being so fortunate 
 as to have secured soul-mates among their every-day 
 circle has proved their safety-valve. You, Roland, 
 and I have simply been denied by Providence a hero- 
 confidant from among our every-day circle. More- 
 over, we have been unwilling to risk betrayal to that 
 circle. We are not hunting for high-figured blackmail 
 and possibly years in prison. 
 
 "One is a university student. The college body 
 refers to his ultra-virile room-mate and himself as "X 
 and wife." But no user of the phrase ever dreams of 
 its real significance, not knowing of the existence of 
 intermediates. Of course they have heard of homo- 
 
 1 Havelock Ellis's works on sex — the foremost in the 
 English language — had not yet been published in 1895. 
 
An Androgyne Outcast. 159 
 
 sexuality, but think only the scum of mankind could 
 be guilty. Impossible in the case of a high-minded 
 intellectual ! 
 
 "Here's Plum. Plumkin, you look as if you had 
 lost your last friend!" 
 
 The 23-year Mollie Coddle sobbed: "Everything 
 looks dark. Two days ago I was fired. I have hardly 
 slept a wink since. I have hope for the future only in 
 the grave. Some bigot denounced me to the boss. He 
 called me into his private office. As this had never 
 happened before, I guessed the reason " 
 
 Plum outlined his conference. I have listened to 
 several similar confessions. The following is a 
 composite. 
 
 Plum: "I confess to being a woman-man and 
 throw myself upon your mercy." 
 
 Fairsea : "That confession is sufficient, and proves 
 you an undesirable person to have around!" 
 
 Plum: "It will be hard to find a new job, since 
 I have been with you for five years and must depend 
 on your recommendation." 
 
 Fairsea : "Knowing your nature, Plum, I could not 
 recommend you even to shovel coal into a furnace I" 
 
 Plum: "But you have steadily advanced me for 
 five years! Why should to-day's discovery make any 
 difference in your opinion of my business ability?" 
 
 Fairsea with a sneer: "An invert ought to leave 
 brain work for others ! He ought to exhaust himself 
 on a farm from sunrise to sunset so that the psychic 
 movings would be next to non-existent. He should pass 
 his life in the back woods; not in a city. He has no 
 
160 Bigotry Unparalielled. 
 
 right in the front ranks of civilization where his ab- 
 normality is so out of place!" 
 
 Plum: "You mean that he should commit intell- 
 ectual and social suicide in obedience to the aesthetic 
 sense of Pharisees?" 
 
 Fairsea : "Certainly ! The innate feelings and the 
 conscience, as well as the Bible, teach that the invert 
 has no rights! I myself have only deep-rooted con- 
 tempt for him! Every fibre in my body, every cell 
 in my tissues, cries out in loud protest against him! 
 He is the lowest of the low! I dare say that at the 
 bottom of your heart, Plum, you are thoroughly 
 ashamed of the confession you made a moment ago?" 
 
 Plum: "By no means. I have learned to look 
 upon bisexuality as a scientist and a philosopher. But 
 you have just shown yourself to be still groping in 
 the Dark Ages. 
 
 "No, Mr. Fairsea, I can hardly bring myself to 
 be ashamed of the handiwork of God. A bisexual 
 has no more reason than a full-fledged man or woman 
 to be ashamed of his God-given sexuality. 
 
 "You appear, Mr. Fairsea, to be unable to get my 
 point of view. All in my anatomy and psyche that you 
 gloat in calling depraved and contemptible I have been 
 used to since my early teens. If your views have any 
 justification in science or ethics, I am unable to see it. 
 Although it almost breaks my heart to be made an out- 
 cast and penniless by yourself, I prefer that lot, know- 
 ing I am in the right, than to be in the wrong even if 
 sitting, as yourself, in the chair of president of the 
 X Company. 
 
 "How do you define 'depraved', Mr. Fairsea? 
 
Reasons for Non-Segregation. 161 
 
 If in such a way as to exclude Socrates, Plato, Michael 
 Angelo, and Raphael, then you exclude me also." 
 
 Fairsea : "But the phenomenon works against the 
 multiplication of the human race. Nature, with this 
 in view, instilled in all but the scum of mankind this 
 utter disgust for the invert. To the end of the con- 
 tinued existence of the race, he must be condemned 
 to a life of unsatisfied longing. For this reason he 
 should be imprisoned for life, not for only ten or 
 twenty years as the statutes now provide ! 
 
 "We strictly segregate diphtheria and scarlet 
 fever, Plum. Why should we not similarly quarantine 
 against inversion?" 
 
 Plum : "Because there is a vast difference. Con- 
 tagious disease, if not strictly segregated, would 
 occasion death and acute suffering to many additional 
 persons. Whereas the bisexuals' being at liberty 
 
 OCCASIONS NOT THE LEAST DETRIMENT TO ANY INDI- 
 VIDUAL, NOR TO THE RACE AS A WHOLE. 
 
 "A second reason: The quarantining of conta- 
 gious disease is only a matter of shutting up a few 
 persons for a few weeks in their own homes. It 
 causes no serious privation or suffering. Whereas 
 the segregation of bisexuals would affect for a lifetime 
 tens of thousands of our most useful members of 
 society. It would occasion, among these already ac- 
 cursed by Nature, additional intense mental suffering, 
 despair, and suicide. 
 
 "Any one who can suggest the latter segregation 
 is unable to see farther away than the end of his nose. 
 
 "And as to race suicide, Mr. Fairsea. You should 
 be the very last to lecture anybody on that subject! 
 You are the father of only two children and have put 
 
162 Leaders of Thought Ignore Evidence. 
 
 three wives under the sod through your beastly, ex- 
 cessive demands! 
 
 "Can it be that you shut your eyes to all evidence? 
 Do ocular proofs count for nothing? Hasn't the 
 human race survived the best decades of classic 
 Greece? While the Greeks are acknowledged by all 
 modern historians to have attained the highest devel- 
 opment of mind and body ever known, they at the 
 same time gave to the women-men who happened to 
 be born among them — as among all races of all ages — 
 an honorable place. And by far more place, both in 
 their personal and social life, than in the case of any 
 other nation of the ancient or modern world." 
 
 Fairsea : "But I had hoped that the human race 
 had evolved above this phenomenon ! I hate to believe 
 it of the human race! Because the phenomenon low- 
 ers humanity down to the lowest levels of animal life ! 
 I " 
 
 Plum: "So does eating!" 
 
 Fairsea: "I detest it! My disgust is innermost 
 and deepseated ! To begin now to show any mercy 
 to the invert, after having for two thousand years 
 confined him in dungeons, burned him at the stake, 
 and buried him alive, would be a backward step in the 
 evolution of the race ! 
 
 "Plum, the invert is not fit to live with the rest of 
 mankind ! He should be shunned as the lepers of 
 biblical times! If generously allowed outside prison 
 walls, the law should at least ordain that the word 
 'unclean' be branded in his forehead, and should com- 
 pel him to cry: 'unclean! unclean!' as he walks 
 the streets, lest his very brushing against decent 
 people < ontaminate them !" 
 
Bias Rules in Sex Domain. 163 
 
 Plum : "All that is only bigotry and bias ! Nearly 
 every man's conduct is still governed by bias !" 
 
 Fairsea: "I even acknowledge that it is bias! 
 For bias is justifiable in matters of sex!. . . .You say 
 that medical writers have declared inverts irrespon- 
 sible! That declaration proves that they know noth- 
 ing about them! You say inverts are assaulted and 
 blackmailed! They deserve to be! It would be 
 wrong for any one at all to show any leniency ! Their 
 existence ought to be made so intolerable as to drive 
 them to lead their sexual life along the lines followed 
 by all other men ! Your case, Plum, fills me with such 
 disgust that I could not rest knowing you were around 
 
 the office I" 
 
 * $ $ $$ $ $ $ * $ 
 
 Roland brought the conversation to a close: 
 "Mankind are so steeped in egotism ! Whatever they 
 are not personally inclined to is always horribly im- 
 moral ! Whatever they are instinctively inclined to is 
 always supremely right! 
 
 "Why not go to the root of the matter and take 
 revenge on Nature, instead of her irresponsible and 
 pitiable step-children? Nature alone is to blame for 
 the existence of sexual cripples. Why not marshal 
 every son and daughter of Adam for the work of 
 honeycombing the entire crust of the earth with gal- 
 leries to be filled with dynamite? And then set off the 
 world-wide charge simultaneously so as to destroy all 
 terrestrial Nature at one coup, humanity included. 
 This would constitute man's sole logical vengeance on 
 bisexuality. 
 
 "But man is truly a passional, rather than 
 a rational, being." 
 
164 The Fairie Boy. 
 
 VI. Thoughts Suggested by the " Hermaphroditoi " 
 in General. 
 
 I associated with the hermaphroditoi less than a 
 year. Paresis Hall then happened to be raided by 
 the police and the hermaphroditoi — who happened to 
 be the police's chief quarry — afterward gave the re- 
 sort a wide berth for fear of arrest. 
 
 The hermaphroditoi numbered about a score. 
 All were highly cultured ultra-androgynes varying in 
 age from eighteen to forty. Half-a-score have given 
 me their life-story. But the careers of only two were 
 particularly tragic. I have therefore, in Parts Four 
 and Five, detailed the life-stories of these two as near- 
 ly as I can remember, having of course taken no notes 
 at the time. 
 
 In the lives of some hermaphroditoi, nothing par- 
 ticularly remarkable had ever transpired beyond their 
 chronic female-impersonation sprees. For example, 
 Roland Reeves, the most brilliant, was, in every act, 
 moderate and sensible. He was of the type of cross- 
 dressing androgyne that possesses little animality. He 
 was by no means a coquette — as were most of the 
 hermaphroditoi. People would say that he had more 
 self-restraint and moral backbone than the coquettes. 
 But my unusually wide observations have taught me 
 that sexual moderation is as a rule due to weak instinct 
 when not to lack of opportunity. 
 
 A prime regulator of the sexual intensity of the 
 adult androgyne — as probably of all humans — consists 
 
The Author at Thirty-four 
 (Amateur Photo) 
 
Parents, Take Time for Your Children! 165 
 
 of the influences toward sexual expression during 
 childhood. My own adult career had its prototype in 
 my intense fairie-ism from two until seven. Sexual 
 impressions of early childhood have often a powerful 
 influence down through middle life. In large measure 
 they determine the course to be taken by the adult 
 sexual life. Parents can not be too watchful of 
 
 THE SECRET PRACTICES OF SMALL CHILDREN, AND OF 
 THE INFLUENCE OF SERVANTS. 
 
 Androgynes, during childhood, are particularly 
 prone to fall into bad habits (fellatio ; or pathicism in 
 psedicatio) because always confined with their sexual 
 opposites. What would one expect of the chastity of 
 a high-strung girl of twelve marooned for a summer on 
 an island with merely a dozen ultra-virile youths? 
 That is the identical situation of youthful androgynes. 
 As a rule, when an androgyne reaches the middle 
 thirties, the instinct to dress and pose as a mademoi- 
 selle gradually becomes feeble. Age sobers many and 
 they become practically asexual. I have observed the 
 same thing in ultra-virile men during my twelve years 
 career as their mignon. Their craze for the opposite 
 sex is strongest from twenty to twenty-five (just at 
 the time when Christian custom interdicts the propen- 
 sity) after which it gradually declines. It is the same 
 with animals. Poulterers cut off the heads of all 
 but "adolescent" roosters. I have myself been a 
 Guinea pig fancier. I discovered that the males grad- 
 ually lose their virility at middle age. 
 
 Indeed I have observed that as androgynes 
 approach fifty, they sometimes become more mascu- 
 line than they ever were, and will even marry. It 
 seems that in rare cases mild virility supplants sexual 
 
166 "Change of Life" {Climacteric). 
 
 passivity as fifty is approached. On the other hand, 
 I have heard of mildly virile men marrying in their 
 twenties, begetting children, and only after reaching 
 middle age, becoming somewhat sissified, acquiring 
 horror feminas, like ultra-androgynes, and finally seek- 
 ing the latter's sexual role. 
 
 These changes in ultra-androgynes and in the 
 mildly virile are like menopause in woman. There is 
 a turning point in the sex life. The hitherto passive 
 ultra-androgyne occasionally becomes active. The 
 mildly virile occasionally develops a quasi-feminine 
 leaning. The latter class were possibly mildly andro- 
 gynous by birth, but the idiosyncrasies did not come to 
 the front of the mental life until the climacteric corres- 
 ponding to menopause. 
 
 In my Autobiography of an Androgyne, I said 
 nothing about my personal "menopause" because it 
 came at about the close of my writing that book, and 
 I did not recognize it as such until after the latter's 
 publication. On page 197, I described how, at the age 
 of forty-two, my weight, stripped, within six weeks, 
 jumped from 133 to 160. For ten years, it had been 
 stationary at 133. For the following five years, it has 
 been stationary at 160. I now attribute the change to 
 "menopause." Moreover, a few months after the in- 
 crease in weight, I kept company with a young lady for 
 half-a-year. I drifted into it almost unconsciously 
 and involuntarily. I paid her gallantries immeasurably 
 beyond any other incident of my life. I even regarded 
 a Platonic marriage as a possibility, though not a 
 probability. 
 
 But I was too extreme an androgyne, in addition 
 to my having been castrated. The virility that occa- 
 
My Personal Menopause. 167 
 
 sionally for the first time surges up in ultra-andro- 
 gynes at "the change of life" could not go very far 
 with me. After six months, I renounced the pseudo- 
 courtship entirely, with disgust at the feminine sex, 
 but particularly with the young female who had done 
 her best to rope me in as her husband. For she did 
 most of the courting. I merely let myself almost fall 
 into her trap. 
 *** * # # * * ** 
 
 Even in my twenty-second year — the period when 
 I belonged to the Cercle Hermaphrodites — I had al- 
 ready written a brief Autobiography. But the bigot- 
 ry of cultured man made me wait twenty-three years 
 for publication. Already — because I happened to be an 
 ultra-androgyne myself — I had selected androgynism 
 as my special field in science and literature. I there- 
 fore desired to collect all the data possible, although 
 not yet having acquired the habit of note-making. 
 
 In order to draw out atypic individuals — particu- 
 larly androgynes — I made it a practice first to reveal 
 my own secrets. This frankness generally led them 
 to confide to me what they never breathed to another — 
 people in general, and particularly cultured andro- 
 gynes, having an absurd reluctance to discuss the 
 sexual side of their lives. (Androgynes for fear of 
 persecution and prosecution, not by reason of prude- 
 ry.) And the human race has suffered so greatly as 
 a result of this obsession ! 
 
 When God created human nature, his handiwork 
 was so horrible that mankind, as soon as they reached 
 the stage of civilization, have thrown a blanket over 
 their own nature, after the example of Shem and 
 
168 Man Ashamed of His Nature. 
 
 Japheth with their father Noah's drunken nakedness. 
 Cultured man has interdicted human nature's coming 
 out into the light of day because of its inexpressible 
 ugliness. 
 
 Even in the twentieth century in the English- 
 speaking world, next to nothing is known about human 
 sexuality. At least with the exception of a handful 
 of sexologists. Each individual simply knows his own 
 sexual life, refuses to divulge it because of its 
 "nastiness," and is unable to overcome his shame to 
 inquire whether other humans (men and women, res- 
 pectively) are of like passions with himself. He 
 assumes yes. But the truth of the matter is that on 
 the sexual side of life, every individual is sui generis. 
 And if a man or woman does chance to discover that an 
 associate is different " from me," right away he or she 
 is crazy to murder the associate for daring to be dif- 
 ferent! On no side of life is charity so much needed 
 as on the sexual. 
 
 But Frank White (or Eunice) — whom, out of 
 deference to the predilections of the general reader, I 
 am going to let tell "his-her" own story in Part Four 
 — needed, by exception, little urging to draw him out. 
 He told me piecemeal. But I hand it on to my readers 
 without a break. Moreover, I endeavor to reproduce 
 his unconscious hifalutin, Johnsonese style of ex- 
 pression. 
 
 At the time he epitomized his life for me, Frank- 
 Eunice (as he was known in the Underworld) was a 
 comely blonde around forty, and five feet five tall. His 
 physique was not noticeably feminine. He possessed 
 merely a small-boy air and appearance, notwithstand- 
 ing his hair was nearly white, though not thin. The 
 
Frank White Introduced. 169 
 
 beardal growth was sparse, always clean-shaven, and 
 for special occasions, eradicated. The amative side 
 of life ("erotic ardor", as he phrased it) was his only- 
 fault. In leisure hours he could talk of little else than 
 modern exemplars of adolescent Adonis or Hercules. 
 In this respect he was one of the two or three extreme 
 hermaphroditoi. 
 
 Bowery, in the Nineteenth Century America's Main 
 
 Red-Light Street, and Stamping-Ground of 
 
 Frank-Eunice, Angelo-Phyllis, and 
 
 Ralph Werther-Jennie June 
 
•Jjfari ,3fowr: 
 
 I. Debut as Adult Female-Impersonator. 
 
 Ralph, I was ushered into this mundane sphere in 
 the year of our Lord 1854. I was a lucky dog to be 
 brought up on the upper West Side a few blocks from 
 Central Park [New York City]. As a diminutive 
 urchin, I dolled myself up in feminine habiliments 
 at every opportunity. Eunice was my favorite play- 
 mate. I opined her appellation the most melodious 
 that ever impinged upon my eardrums and regretted 
 it was not mine personally. Whenever I flaunted my- 
 self in skirts, I adopted it. 
 
 In my early teens, father escorted me to a phy- 
 sician that the latter might query me concerning my 
 feminine predilections and ridicule me out of same. 
 Simultaneously father, through severe castigation, im- 
 posed a finis to female-impersonation in my own clique. 
 I therefore commenced, during periods of special ob- 
 session to be a puella, the practice of perambulating 
 the slums, first by daylight, and later after the shades 
 of night had fallen. During these insensate peregrin- 
 ations, there would swarm through my mind visions 
 of flirtations with the ruffians around my age that I 
 encountered. These "huskies" riveted my gaze. 
 They fascinated me. But not until the fifth or sixth 
 
 » [170] 
 
The Pugilists' Haven. 171 
 
 peregrination could I screw up courage to insinuate 
 myself into the confidence of one of these magical 
 intelligences. 
 
 I chanced for the first time to run across a Bowery 
 bar-room, the "Pugilists' Haven," which, I had read in 
 the papers, was the rendezvous of prize-fighters, 
 gamblers, and gun-men [the most desperate type of 
 gangster who will murder for pay]. The press ad- 
 vocated its obliteration. Curious that just because 
 of this reputation, I was immediately insane to enter. 
 For it was unholy ground. I reflected : "In this lowest 
 of dives, they may accept me as a puella, although 
 superficially a boy." Because all early influences, 
 Ralph, had made me opine that taking the part of a 
 girl was the very lowest thing a boy could descend to. 
 I further pondered: "Between the luxurious mansion 
 of pater familias and this dingy dive, give me the 
 latter! For here alone I might be able to pass as a 
 puella. In my own cultured, Christian circle, female- 
 impersonation is castigated. But would not the atti- 
 tude of the offscouring of our mundane sphere — the 
 Pugilists' Haven gunmen — be different?" 
 
 And how crazy I was to insinuate myself with the 
 adolescent gunmen, whom I had only read about ! The 
 very supposition of their presence just within that 
 latticed door attracted me as a potent magnet snatches 
 steel filings to itself. I passed and repassed the dive, 
 continuously imagining what would transpire if I 
 should penetrate this unholy of unholies, and having 
 delectable visions of every species of flirtation with the 
 demigods who made the saloon their rendezvous. 
 
 I finally emboldened myself to thrust aside a leaf 
 of the latticed portal. It was my first appearance in- 
 
172 "A Cat in a Strange Garret." 
 
 side a saloon, and I never had tasted any intoxicant. 
 In my diffidence and ignorance of the proper course to 
 pursue, I subsided into the first vacant fauteuil. For, 
 on one side, against the wall, were rude, wooden faut- 
 euils, almost all occupied by middle-aged cherry-nosed 
 individuals. Extending the full length of the other 
 side was a bar crowded with fast-looking younger men, 
 each with a glass before him. Doubtless because of 
 my verdancy, several commenced eyeing me, making 
 remarks, and laughing. The nearest bar-tender im- 
 mediately inquired : "Doll-baby, what'll yer have ter 
 drink?" 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "Jackass! Every bloke dat comes inter dis here 
 joint has ter take somethink!" 
 
 "Then give me a glass of beer," I replied hardly 
 above a whisper. In my embarrassment, I imbibed 
 the beverage almost at a swallow. That gave all the 
 witnesses hysterics. They assured me: "We only sip 
 it!" They addressed me as "Siss!" "Pet!" 
 "Fairie!" I did not immediately perceive the signi- 
 ficance of the last appellation. I was encircled. Par- 
 ticularly two sailors ingratiated themselves. They 
 requested me to purchase "schnapps" for them because 
 impecunious. I provided glass after glass, for they 
 were bewitchingly gallant. All the other individuals 
 were kidding me : "The doll-baby likes the blue-jackets, 
 sure Mike !" "Sailor-boy, take off your suit and make 
 it a present to her !" "How I wish I was one of Uncle 
 Sam's boys and I'd git steeped in schnapps too !" I was 
 mortified by such observations, and as soon as the 
 sailor-boys invited me, departed under their escort. 
 
 I hired a chamber at a third-class hotel nearby. 
 
A Transformation Not Bargained For. 173 
 
 I gave them funds to secure another. For we did not 
 desire that the clerk perceive that we were all to occupy 
 the identic room. We pretended the sailors and I 
 were unacquainted 
 
 They finished by inserting a handkerchief into my 
 buccal cavity, tying a strip of the bed linen over it, 
 binding my hands behind my back, and fastening my 
 lower extremities to the bed springs so that I could not 
 even kick. They then departed with my wallet and 
 outer clothing. 
 
 After an hour of helplessness, I discovered that 
 the partition to the adjacent chamber was scarcely 
 more than card-board. Because I perceived sounds of 
 the entrance of an individual. I could even hear his 
 breathing. I discerned the words : "How I wish I had 
 three hundred dollars !" 
 
 I commenced a continuous jouncing up and down. 
 The uninterrupted tintinnabulation of the springs 
 attracted the individual's attention and he addressed 
 me. I could respond only with a low gurgling. The 
 clerk soon liberated me. I had to confess everything. 
 But he manifested sympathy and donated a nickel for 
 carfare. 
 
 One blue-jacket was of about my own measure- 
 ments. Evidently he intended to desert. For he had 
 abandoned his uniform. I was compelled to attire my- 
 self therein and boarded a car for my domicile. 
 
 My house-key had remained in my appropriated 
 habiliments. How to enter was my problem. If I 
 rang, my arrival at midnight costumed as a sailor 
 would disclose everything. I hoped the butler had ne- 
 glected to secure the covering of the coal-hole in front 
 of the basement windows. 
 
174 Androgynes Resourceful. 
 
 Every one had retired. Able to raise the cover- 
 ing, I dropped to the coal-pile. I discovered that the 
 door at the head of the cellar stairs was also fortu- 
 nately unsecured. With trepidation and in absolute 
 silence, I ascended, in stocking feet, to my chamber 
 and devoutly thanked Providence for restoration to 
 my family without a hair injured. 
 
 I had only recently purchased the appropriated 
 habiliments. The subsequent day I visited the same 
 establishment and succeeded in securing an exact du- 
 plicate so that my family would not observe the dis- 
 appearance of the original. 
 
Frank — Eunice. 175 
 
 II. The Pug Heaven. 
 
 I henceforth visited the Pugilists' Haven one eve- 
 ning each week. After the appropriation of one good 
 suit, I always attired myself rather shabbily. After 
 seven o'clock dinner, I would change to the cast-off ap- 
 parel and noiselessly glide down the two flights of 
 stairs from my chamber. Fortunately father always 
 had prayers after dinner. While the family were in the 
 prayer-room and all the servants in their dining-room, 
 I succeeded in engineering my exit for an evening's 
 revel with little risk, in my poverty-stricken disguise, 
 of encountering any individual in the halls. No one 
 ever suspected the reason for my absences. It was 
 several times remarked that I had been out late. But 
 I threw the observer off the scent by the pretext of a 
 perambulation to obviate insomnia. 
 
 As I proceeded rapidly from my domicile, I would, 
 if I detected a familiar figure advancing, cross to the 
 other side of the street and make a feint of ringing a 
 doorbell. In order, in my dilapidated apparel, to avert 
 the danger of encountering on the public conveyance 
 some one acquainted with my identity, I would peram- 
 bulate more than a mile in order to attain the Bowery 
 by an east-side car. On the way I would conceal my 
 house-key and an emergency greenback in a crevice 
 in the Central Park stonewall — always the identic 
 cavity in order to be regained with ease. 
 
 At Pug Heaven — as my dive was nicknamed — I 
 was universally given a hearty welcome and secured 
 
176 A Female with Male Genitals. 
 
 the society of adolescent ruffians fairly clean and 
 sprucely attired. Of course they always ransacked my 
 pockets the first chance that offered. Before it could 
 happen, I had treated liberally half-a-dozen of the 
 handsomest, and thus insinuated myself into their 
 good graces. I always kept a reserve five-dollar bill 
 sewed in the waistband of my trousers — a pair worn 
 on these sprees alone because too shabby to be a temp- 
 tation for appropriation. 
 
 On my second appearance at Pug Heaven, the 
 heroic gunmen entertained me with episodes about 
 other female-impersonators they had encountered. I 
 particularly remember stories about the "Duchess 
 of Austria," from whom, they recounted, "some lucky 
 guys had pumped" hundreds of dollars. One narrated 
 anecdotes of a physician located south of Fourteenth 
 Street. Young fellows would visit his office to be medi- 
 cated and he would reveal his own bisexuality. My 
 pals did not marvel at all over my strange appetencies. 
 They entreated me to bring around other female-im- 
 personators. They were merely anxious for the money 
 it would bring them. When I apologized for my queer 
 penchant, they said : "It is nothing. It is Nature." 
 Ralph, those adolescent Pug Heaven sluggers knew 
 more about the psychology of instinctive female-im- 
 personators than all the M. D.'s in America combined ! 
 From that single hour's conversation, I ascertained 
 more about my own personality than in my prior four- 
 teen years pilgrimage on this planet. For the first 
 time, the riddle of my existence was solved; I per- 
 ceived that I had been born a biological sport — a fe- 
 male with male genitals. 
 
 I soon acquired half-a-dozen permanent favorites. 
 
Impersonators Expert Actors. 177 
 
 These adolescent sluggers and gunmen lost no time in 
 assuring me : "You're only a doll-baby, Eunice, and so 
 need us big, strong fellows to fight your battles. But 
 you must stay with our gang! If we should catch 
 you running around with any other, we'd murder you !" 
 
 I coveted to be their slave, Ralph, and did all I 
 could for them without disclosing that I belonged to 
 a wealthy family, because a female-impersonator of a 
 higher social stratum associating incognito with gang- 
 sters must conceal his status. At Pug Heaven, I be- 
 came an expert detective and actor — an accomplish- 
 ment requisite for every upper-class impersonator 
 destined to sprees in the Underworld. 
 
 A thousand times I desiderated female corporeali- 
 ty so that I could have married one of these magic 
 gunmen. How I have envied many a young mother 
 before my eyes with babe in arms ! How could a God 
 of love have created me physically a male when I have 
 always so coveted personal female corporeality, and, in 
 adulthood, the mothering of offspring ! 
 
 These weekly female-impersonation explosions 
 continued more than two years, when my father 
 relegated me to a university several hours from New 
 York. I leave it nameless — to spare it the disgrace of 
 having once numbered "Frank White" among its stu- 
 dents. These evenings in Pug Heaven were the most 
 beatific feature of life. During college vacations, and 
 for several years following graduation, I occasionally 
 visited the joint. But finally, on my return from an 
 extended residence in Europe, I discovered a haber- 
 dashery occupying the site. I was informed that an 
 application for renewal of license had been denied. 
 Its habitues became thus scattered. 
 
178 Frank — Eunice. 
 
 III. A University Friendship. 
 
 Would it interest you, Ralph-Jennie, to hear how 
 I was blackmailed in college? The episode commenced 
 only in my junior year. Throughout the first two 
 years, because of the safety-valve I possessed in the 
 Pug Heaven gunmen, I had succeeded in restraining 
 my appetencies and presenting no occasion for chant- 
 age. But early in my junior year, the janitor of my 
 dormitory happened to be an exquisite chocolate 
 cream-drop. Only twenty, and with such a "divine" 
 countenance! I could have gazed into it throughout 
 eternity without a second's intermission — until I de- 
 tected the rascality underneath ! Such dreamy brown 
 eyes! Perfect, arched eyebrows! Sun-flower cheeks! 
 And soft chestnut hair! Ralph, you never saw any- 
 thing so fascinating ! For weeks I experienced anguish 
 at being denied a declaration of my admiration! I 
 then commenced making the "divine" creature pres- 
 ents. And it was then not long before I began inviting 
 him around to my room after all the other students had 
 retired and there was little risk of any individual dis- 
 covering the unequal friendship. For I would have 
 been ostracized for entertaining a janitor. And again 
 it was not long before Jack manifested a roguish 
 streak in his character, which any one but an intimate 
 would have opined equally beautiful with his counte- 
 nance and figure. After I discovered his true charac- 
 ter, my fascination died down. But there was abso- 
 lutely nothing to do but tolerate him up to graduation. 
 
Anglo-American Law Unintelligent. 179 
 
 In the course of my two decades of adulthood, I 
 have repeatedly fallen victim to the physical charms 
 of some adolescent stalwart menial in my every-day 
 environment. I have lived much abroad. In the 
 United States and Great Britain, three out of four, if 
 of generally good reputation, demonstrate themselves 
 diamonds in the rough. They refuse to take advantage 
 of a step-child of Nature whose secret they happen to 
 unearth. But on the continent of Europe, the propor- 
 tion is as high as nineteen out of twenty. There a 
 correct knowledge of sexual intermediates is widely 
 disseminated and the courts deal out justice to the 
 woman-man. Even the Paris apache realizes that 
 these bisexuals are worthy of commiseration and not 
 responsible for their idiosyncrasies. But English- 
 speaking countries give carte blanche to every prude 
 actuated to pillage and even murder us women-men. 
 We are outlaws ; enjoy no police protection ; and are 
 denied recourse to the laws and courts. In English- 
 speaking lands, as already in other civilized countries, 
 even the scum of society should be educated, first by 
 newspaper propaganda whenever the murder of an 
 intermediate is described, and then from mouth to 
 mouth, that the woman-man and the man-woman are 
 irresponsible for their exceptional sexuality and should 
 not be tortured on account of it. 
 
 Notwithstanding that I immediately entered into 
 an arrangement by which Jack benefited fifty dollars 
 a month, I soon perceived evidences of whisperings 
 that "Frank White is abnormal!" An exasperated 
 classmate once even exclaimed sarcastically: "You 
 are not a proper person to associate with !" 
 
 In my senior year, I failed of a much coveted 
 
180 Persecution of Androgynes. 
 
 election to a senior society — an election which many 
 indeed had prophesied on the basis of my wealth and 
 scholarship. The failure was explicable only in the 
 rumors apparently being circulated. But fortunately 
 they were only rumors. In my college days, I would 
 never have been so reckless as to have permitted any 
 individual ever to discover me, even for a second, in 
 conversation with such as Jack. Thus Incredulity fol- 
 lowed closely on the steps of Rumor. Because of my 
 general goody-goodiness, the fellows probably thought 
 it impossible for me to be so utterly depraved! But 
 the actuality was far beyond rumor. The only mis- 
 take was the rumormongers a priori assumption of 
 deepdyed depravity. I was not a whit more corrupt 
 than those Pharisees themselves! The worst of the 
 matter was that I am a girl incarnated in a fellow's 
 body, and nevertheless doomed to be segregated exclu- 
 sively with males. If the world could only realize that 
 nearly all their anxieties and horrors are as ground- 
 less as this abhorrence of myself in the university ! 
 
 Because no busybody engaged a detective to ferret 
 out my secrets, I was privileged to graduate. But 
 commencement day was like that of my own funeral. 
 For I realized I was bidding alma mater a farewell 
 forever. First, on account of Jack's treacherous char- 
 acter, who had remained with the university because 
 of his advantages with me; and secondly, on account 
 of my questionable reputation. Tears even trickled 
 down my cheeks during the commencement exercises, 
 Ralph. For I felt that I was in my death throes so far 
 as the university is concerned. I was compelled hence- 
 forth to keep out of touch, including all alumni gather- 
 ings. In all class letters and address lists published 
 
Wiles of Androgynes. 181 
 
 the first five years, I engineered things so that there 
 appeared after my name: "Whereabouts unknown." 
 Otherwise Jack might have ferreted me out. The 
 Pharisees doubtless concluded my "depravity" had 
 wrecked my life. But the fact was that I rose rapidly 
 in my business career. 
 
 Primarily in -order to give Jack the slip, I spent 
 the year after graduation in Europe — for the most 
 part in Paris. I despatched Jack several cards in 
 order to put him on a false scent. 
 
 On resuming residence in New York, I had to 
 make the best of its Overworld. I ascertained that 
 they are incredibly bigoted as compared with the 
 liberalism of continental Europe. Only a person who 
 has resided there has acquired the acuteness of vision 
 to discern the legend on the hatbands of upper-class 
 New Yorkers : "I am holier than thou !" 
 
 I had heard that the Rialto is New York's stamp- 
 ing-ground for amateur female-impersonators. Ac- 
 cordingly I commenced devoting one or two evenings a 
 week to its resorts. As. soon as I learned that "the 
 Hall" is the home of cultured female-impersonation, 
 I made it my own headquarters. 
 
182 Frank — Eunice. 
 
 IV. The Masked Ball. 
 
 You inquire, Ralph-Jennie, if I have been black- 
 mailed during my business career. I confess I have 
 been more negligent than most cultured women-men, 
 and as a punishment, have suffered more blackmail. 
 I have insanely betrayed my secret to several dishonest 
 young bloods who knew who I am and therefore forced 
 large sums out of me. I shall describe the most re- 
 markable case. 
 
 But first, why have I been the victim of black- 
 mail? Because my strongest passion is to get into 
 feminine finery now and then and play the coquette. 
 I also occasionally yield to instinct in the way Nature 
 ordained for me. But in all this I transgress not in 
 the least against God or man. Of course I have of- 
 fended against laws that are a legacy from the Dark 
 Ages. 
 
 No man should cast a stone at me who indulges 
 in marital joys more than once a week. For since my 
 Pug Heaven apprenticeship, I have not myself aver- 
 aged once a week. True I have changed partners 
 about thirty times. But if circumstances had rendered 
 it possible, I would have been satisfied with a solitary 
 permanent one. But in the case of women-men, there 
 do not exist the reasons for monandry and the per- 
 manency of the bond. 
 
 But while I have been guilty of nothing to be 
 ashamed of in the eyes of the All-Wise, I have — owing 
 to irrational laws, fear of imprisonment, and particu- 
 
Androgynes' Families Unsuspicious. 183 
 
 larly of bringing bitter disgrace and sorrow on my 
 family — suffered myself to be bled unmercifully. 
 
 Ever since resuming residence in New York, I 
 have taken advantage of all the public masked balls 
 to gratify my instinct to pose as a belle. Even those 
 under the humble auspices of the Draymen's Union, 
 the "Tonsorial Artists," and the "Societe Universelle 
 des Cuisiniers." 
 
 A particularly great event has been the annual 
 Masked Ball of the Philhedonic Society. Every pair 
 of trousers may attend which can scrape together 
 $10 for self and "lady." The patrons range from 
 scions of the aristocracy out for a lark, to crooks bent 
 on thievery. For conditions at the Philhedonic Ball 
 are ideal for the light-fingered fraternity, particularly 
 because every patron is in disguise, with a mask cover- 
 ing at least the upper third of the face, and the million- 
 aire and the thief dance and flirt together. 
 
 Our families have, of course, no suspicion that we 
 hermaphroditoi are only pseudo-men. While marvel- 
 ling because we have never courted a girl, they have 
 not been so far enlightened as to discern what that 
 signifies. That they may always remain in their ignor- 
 ance, we hermaphroditoi — as you are aware — set out 
 from our respective domiciles for a public Masked Ball 
 in masculine attire. Later, with hired masculine es- 
 cort, we depart from [Paresis] Hall bewigged, bepad- 
 ded, bepowdered, bejewelled, and begowned to shine 
 
 as belles on the bewaxed floor of X Garden. After 
 
 arrival there, we associate, without waiting for an in- 
 troduction, with whatever pair of trousers — that is, 
 presumably — appears fair to look upon. We hermaph- 
 roditoi do our best to converse like real belles. An ac- 
 
184 America's Most Impious. 
 
 cidentrl gruff note does sometimes betray us. But 
 usually the gallant comprehends, sympathizes, and 
 merely laughs at a good joke on himself. 
 
 The Philhedonic Ball is the spectacle of a lifetime. 
 I do not approve all that transpires. The two large 
 orchestras, playing alternately, pour forth continuously 
 into the inebriated ears of the three thousand revellers 
 the thrilling music of the most voluptuous dances, 
 rightly tabooed by all decent society. The revellers are 
 as impious a crowd as ever gathers in America. I 
 would approve the police's radically restricting the 
 present license. I am sure we hermaphroditoi are not 
 among those who give the ball a bad name. 
 
 Some of the costumes have been ordered from 
 Paris and London. Many have already graced the 
 Mardi Gras of New Orleans or Nice. Practically 
 every romantic or grotesque character ever heard of 
 is on the floor: monkeys, parrots, geese, yellow kids, 
 foxy grandpa, Happy Hooligan, Cupid, Mephistophe- 
 les, and a thousand others. 
 
 At a Philhedonic Ball of about ten years ago — at 
 which the most remarkable blackmail episode of my 
 life had its origin — I impersonated Euterpe. Down to 
 my debacle, money fortunately came easy with me. I 
 therefore endeavored to adorn every Masked Ball with 
 the most elaborate feminine costume on display there. 
 My Euterpe gown, terminating at the knees, was of 
 turquoise satin. It was ornamented with several 
 flounces of miniature sleigh bells washed in gold. 
 Whenever I moved, they emitted a melodious jingle. 
 My silk, open-work stockings were of an azure hue, 
 and the pumps of purple kid, with mother-of-pearl 
 buckles. My chevelure was surmounted with a gold- 
 
The Belle of the Ball. 185 
 
 plated lyre, studded with hundreds of Paris diamonds, 
 which, under the myriad gas flames, scintillated 
 dazzlingly. I had had my beardal hair eradicated so 
 that I could glory in a countenance of an infantile soft- 
 ness and an exquisite glabrity. 
 
 Until about three, everything transpired after a 
 beauteous fashion. My unrivalled costume had 
 attracted a score of flirts, begging a dance with me. 
 I finally fell to chattering with an individual in a bear- 
 skin. He soon declared his conviction that I was 
 merely a female-impersonator. But by exception he 
 manifested irritation at being hoodwinked, and nausea 
 at the very idea of cross-dressing. A panic supervened 
 upon his strident tones. I was overwhelmed with 
 mortification and trepidation on discovering myself in 
 the clutches of what I supposed one of those charlatans 
 who attend the function in order to unearth a 
 moneyed female-impersonator of some prominence 
 with chantage as objective. I lost all heart for mim- 
 icking a belle. Most terrible of all, the fellow next 
 denuded my face of the mask. Horrified lest my 
 identity be disclosed, I pressed the lacerated fabric to 
 my countenance and proceeded toward the dressing- 
 room. 
 
 In the corridor, the fellow blurted out : "I think I 
 know you. Those eyes of yourn — how far apart they 
 are! They give you a queer look that no guy kin for- 
 git who has seen you several times. Any bloke'd re- 
 cognize you anywhere, even with a girl's wig on. I 
 have often passed you down on Wall Street." 
 
 Though actually employed a stone's throw from 
 that street and promenading it almost every lunch 
 hour, I responded almost inaudibly, I was in a state of 
 
186 Tony Neddo. 
 
 such trepidation : "You are in error. I am employed 
 on 42d Street." 
 
 "Don't think I'm a fool! I'm so sure of meself 
 that I'm goin' to hang 'round Wall Street till I run 
 into you agin . And I'm sure comin' up to say 
 'Hoddo!' Sure I remember your sissie stride 
 and, most of all, the way you stare at young 
 fellers as if you were goin' to eat them up ! I work 
 on that street meself; elevator man in the Z — 
 Buildin'. Me name is Tony Neddo. I'm not ashamed 
 to let any one know who I am! But you! Do you 
 know you've done an awful dirty, disgustin' thin' in 
 comin' to the ball in a girl's rig? For this you'll have 
 to pay dear! But if you know on which side your 
 bread is buttered, no guy '11 ever be the wiser on ac- 
 count of what I've just found out. 
 
 "But get rid of your tremblin' ! You needn't be 
 'fraid of me. I ain't the mean guy you think. When 
 you meet me in my every-day clothes, you kin see for 
 yourself. You'll see I'm a young feller of strong, pure 
 manhood. You'll see I've the build of a pugilist. Who- 
 ever you are, Mr. Skirt, I know, from the diamonds in 
 your harp, you're rich! On the other hand, I know I 
 kin do for you far more than you kin for me. Any 
 how, let's you and me be best friends? We'll part now, 
 but you'll sure see me comin' up to you on Wall Street 
 soon. Bye-bye, sweetheart!" 
 
 O Ralph-Jennie, the fellow was really cute as he 
 took his departure. He captivated me by his good- 
 humored farewell. It dissipated all my depression. 
 While I realized he would descend to chantage, I al- 
 ready perceived he possessed innumerable compensat- 
 ing characteristics. Every individual is derelict in 
 
Infatuation. 187 
 
 some respect. Tony had never been enlightened on 
 the immorality of chantage. So I hardly devoted a 
 second thought to his cupidity. At the time I possessed 
 no "best friend" — no "adopted son", as we older 
 hermaphroditoi designate our sweethearts. I im- 
 mediately commenced to gloat over Tony as my con- 
 quest — my boy! How proud I already was of him, 
 although not yet having visioned his countenance! 
 But he had strutted away in such a manly fashion and 
 possessed such a deep bass, ultra-masculine voice! I 
 could perceive he was athletic and a little larger than 
 the average man. And I was particularly obsessed 
 with his blatant, nonchalant description of himself : 
 "Strong, pure manhood" ! 
 
 Henceforth my stream of thought was surfeited 
 with visions of conversing with him again. But the 
 opportunity did not supervene until two awfully long 
 hours -in the closing half -hour of the ball. The floor 
 was ankle-deep with confetti, rendering further danc- 
 ing impracticable. A goodly proportion of the revellers 
 were anyway too tipsy or too fatigued to be on their 
 feet. The hundreds promenading the arena, besides 
 the couple of thousand in the boxes and balconies, 
 were sprinkled with red, white, and blue confetti and 
 wound round and round with paper streamers of all 
 colors. A steadily flowing river of humanity was dis- 
 charging into the street. I would myself have already 
 taken my departure, but had devoted the last half- 
 hour to dragging myself wearily to every nook and 
 corner in search of my bear. 
 
 Finally, in the main corridor, a handsome adoles- 
 cent stepped smilingly out of the stream of humanity 
 
188 Chantage. 
 
 slowly moving streetward : "Are you looking for me, 
 sweetheart? I am Tony Neddo." 
 
 He dared excuse himself, for a moment or two, 
 from his "lady" — considering to what class she be- 
 longed! We withdrew out of her hearing. I was 
 tickled to death on now beholding what I had drawn in 
 the lottery. I had known the fellow was ultra- 
 masculine. But not until that moment did I discover 
 that he was handsome into the bargain. Indeed he 
 was indisputably the best looker of the hundreds of 
 young fellows who, with their "ladies," streamed by 
 as we whispered together. 
 
 "How old are you ?" I began. 
 
 "Nineteen is all." 
 
 "Eleven years younger than myself. Just my 
 ideal age for a young man to be adopted as my son. 
 Tell me frankly: Did anybody ever tell you that you 
 are unusually good-looking?" 
 
 "That's not for me to say. But you yourself see 
 me now when I have my own clothes on. I don't look 
 as if I belonged to the weak, crippled sex — as you do 
 yourself — do I? I look to be a he-man, don't I? 
 While you are one of those awful she-men ! Mr. 
 Skirt, just think of your own shameful, disgustin' 
 nature ! Your secret and character have come into me 
 power. And it wouldn't do you any good to hit back. 
 I have nothin' at all to lose. 
 
 "But I'm only talkin' business now. Every bloke 
 puts his foot into it now and again. And I did at our 
 first meetin'. Because I was then just crazy for 
 money. That's all. But it only looks as if I'm after 
 your money. What I really and truly want is the 
 chance to make your life happy. I want to be your 
 
Boon of an "Adopted Son." 189 
 
 best friend. Just let me see what you would do for a 
 young feller who would give himself to you, body and 
 soul. No one is poorer than me these days. All I 
 got is the suit on me back. I only rented that bear 
 rig for the evenin V 
 
 "Well, Tony, how much would you expect?" 
 
 "Two hundred bucks a month." 
 
 I argued for one hundred — all that at the time I 
 cared to part with, although my infatuation soon after 
 augmented so that I voluntarily presented him three 
 times my first offer. But on this first night I repeat- 
 edly assured him coaxingly, though sincerely, that he 
 was just the type of young fellow that appealed to me. 
 Over and over again he replied : "I wouldn't sell me 
 goodwill so cheap ! All your fine talk, Mr. Skirt, 
 doesn't get us anywhere. It doesn't have the least 
 effect on me. Only money talks. If you'll part with 
 two hundred bucks, I'll know you think that much of 
 me. Besides, if we don't fix up matters now, don't 
 ever show your face again on Wall Street !" 
 
 But when he had bluffed to his limit, he accepted 
 my first offer. And I didn't mind the promise of 
 that stipend to him — so winsome and handsome and 
 assuring me he would be my soul-mate. 
 
 Because his "lady" was dancing attendance, our 
 conversation had to be broken off before the end of 
 five minutes. In parting, I said: "The more I have 
 heard you converse, the better I like you, Tony. You 
 are a pretty smart boy. I would be glad to give you 
 an education, so that you can rise to my own social 
 level instead of continuing in the servant class. We 
 shall not regard our agreement as blackmail. Instead 
 I now adopt you as my sole well-beloved son. I will 
 
190 Now Man; Now Woman. 
 
 even be your slave. We shall enjoy together all the 
 good things of life. But, remember, you must never 
 do anything to betray my character and our relations 
 to anybody. And, Tony, always call me 'Frank.' 
 I would prefer that in private you called me 'Eunice,' 
 but if you acquired the habit, you would sometimes 
 make a break before people." 
 
Frank — Eunice. 191 
 
 V. Frank-Eunice's Indiscretion. 
 
 Would you like, Ralph-Jennie, to be enlightened 
 as to how I came to reside, five years of my prime, 
 within prison walls? You have censured me for 
 black-guarding the Church and religious people. But 
 do you marvel thereat after I disclose that it was they 
 who were instrumental in robbing me of five years of 
 man's all too brief sojourn on earth? In my youth, I 
 was naturally religious. While no longer a church 
 member, not a Sunday passes but I attend morning 
 service. I continue to be a disciple of Christ in my 
 own way, and estimate church attendance as one of 
 the greatest privileges of existence. But religious 
 people, the Church, and the Bible have occasioned me 
 such terrible persecution that I can no longer do aught 
 than revile them for their hypocrisy. And the aver- 
 age preacher, while meaning well, is so bigoted ! Only 
 recently I heard one declaim about the deluge: "God 
 then drowned humanity as rats with the exception of 
 Noah's family because MONSTERS were being born 
 in considerable numbers." He claimed that "monsters" 
 is the correct translation for "giants" of King James' 
 version. And he made evident that he understood by 
 "monsters" us bisexuals. Must we poor sexual 
 cripples bear the blame not alone for the decline and 
 fall of nations, but also for the Noachian deluge? 
 
 You ask, Ralph-Jennie, my philosophy of life. 
 First : To brighten the lives of unfortunates. Second- 
 ly: To get out of existence all the good times one can 
 without transgressing against any one else. We are 
 
192 Making a Misanthrope. 
 
 certain of nothing in this life except the passing 
 moment. I even do not know that you exist, Ralph, 
 otherwise than as a percept in my stream of thought. 
 My incarceration supervened, but not immediate- 
 ly, upon my reception of Tony Neddo as adopted son. 
 Nature created me impotent. I could never 
 possess wife and children. And for the reason that 
 I accepted the only alternative of an adopted son, 
 society incarcerated me! Ralph, do you call that 
 Christianity and enlightenment? You, Ralph, recog- 
 nizing that I am a congenital goody-goody, are in con- 
 dition to accept my declaration that I have never in 
 all my earthly pilgrimage transgressed against a sol- 
 itary individual. In addition, Mother Nature endowed 
 me with such cerebral capacity that at the univer- 
 sity I was one of the leaders in scholarship. Never- 
 theless policemen and jailers — who of course are not 
 responsible for their meager education in the rural 
 districts of Ireland, where they were instructed merely 
 to spell out the primer and scrawl their own names — 
 have tyrannized over me, handcuffed me, and compelled 
 me, when absolutely guiltless of any offence against 
 the Deity or society, though having transgressed 
 against mediaeval jurisprudence, to accompany them 
 whither I strenuously did not desire, and to perform 
 hard labor for years without remuneration, and to 
 abide in a cell, amid vermin, and subsist on disgusting 
 nourishment! Do you marvel that such impositions, 
 continued for years, have rendered me a misanthrope? 
 For while I sympathize with and alleviate the suffer- 
 ings of humanity up to my capacity, I experience only 
 detestation for hypocritical humanity surfeited with 
 exuberant health and in influential positions. 
 
Androgynes Nabobize Menials. 193 
 
 After the Masked Ball of ten years ago, Tony 
 Neddo continued, for a longer period than any other 
 young fellow, to be my adopted son and soul-mate. 
 With the exception of his initial roguery, he rang true. 
 Of course the consideration that I loaded him with 
 benefits exercised an enormous influence. He real- 
 ized that solely by cultivating my affection, he could 
 play a good thing for all it was worth. My ambition 
 to educate him for a profession was doomed to dis- 
 appointment. While sufficiently intelligent in practi- 
 cal affairs, he lacked the gray matter for acquiring 
 book knowledge. 
 
 The immediate reason for my incarceration was 
 merely an indiscretion. I had resided two years on the 
 continent of Europe, where every individual compre- 
 hends bisexuality and nobody oppresses those so un- 
 fortunate as to be afflicted therewith. That tolerance 
 unfitted me for residence in the United States, where 
 the words "sex" and "sin" are synonyms. I errone- 
 ously opined I could be as overt in New York as in 
 Paris. 
 
 Therefore, while continuing to reside with my 
 aged parents, I, soon after adopting Tony (not legally 
 of course) leased for him a furnished apartment at 
 a high-class residential hotel. Two successive hostel- 
 ries finally refused to rent further to Tony and me. 
 In the third year, we were in our third caravansary. 
 But its personnel proved of unexampled bigotry — 
 because the manager was a narrowminded Methodist. 
 He opined that simply expelling Tony and myself 
 ignominiously was not sufficient. He was busybody 
 to the extent of praying for my incarceration. There- 
 fore he engaged an unusually handsome youthful 
 
194 Immorality a Novelty in New York. 
 
 detective to enmesh me. Attired as a Beau Brummel, 
 the sneak first scraped acquaintance and then insinu- 
 ated himself into my confidence. Soon he succeeded 
 in seducing me where it was possible for a confederate 
 to employ a camera without my suspecting anything. 
 It was on the basis of that photograph that I was 
 sentenced. My accomplice, who had been the sole 
 occasion of the so-called felony, and who alone had 
 proceeded deliberately and wilfully, received merely 
 the thanks of the court and of society. 
 
 You inquire about the element of suffering during 
 my incarceration. The first week in the Tombs jail, 
 I lay awake half of every night in mental anguish, for 
 I realized I was a martyr. Every one was accusing 
 me of deepdyed depravity when my life was actually 
 on a high ethical plane. All the journals announced 
 in big headlines that I had been surprised in a double 
 life — intimating wilful immorality. "Immorality"! 
 "Immorality" ! That was the keynote of all news- 
 paper accounts of myself, as if hitherto "immorality" 
 had been an unknown quantity with Knickerbockers. 
 People could not get through singing the refrain : "At 
 last a New Yorker has been discovered who is infected 
 with immorality !! !" The journals stated that I had 
 been incarcerated in the Tombs to await trial, the evi- 
 dence against me being so incontrovertible and the 
 felony charged so revolting that bail had been refused. 
 At the time I was unenlightened as to what that 
 evidence was and a thousand possibilities coursed 
 through my stream of thought, none of which, how- 
 ever, emerged in my subsequent trial. 
 
 I was terribly browbeaten by the plebeian police. 
 They resorted to subterfuge and endeavored by every 
 
Intellectual Aristocrat Browbeaten by Plebeians. 195 
 
 means to betray me into confession of the secrets of 
 my heart that they suspected. They adopted insulting 
 language. They inquired point-blank over and over 
 again in the common indecent expressions whether I 
 had not with such and such persons (particularly 
 Tony) been guilty of what jurists denominate ridicu- 
 lously, though solemnly and with bated breath, "the 
 crime against Nature," when in fact nothing is more 
 natural than the conduct in question. It is exclusively 
 Nature's feat. But I scrupulously guarded myself 
 from making a single incriminating statement. I 
 refused in any way to admit being a bisexual — because 
 all my inquisitors presented evidence that they consid- 
 ered that condition the most horrible of crimes. 
 
 This was before I ascertained the existence of 
 the photograph and I fully expected to elude incarcer- 
 ation. And the result proved that they were impotent 
 to lay their hands on any other legal evidence beyond 
 the detective's statements. 
 
 That first week in the Tombs I would have com- 
 mitted suicide if I had been vouchsafed an instrument. 
 For I was continuously immersed in the deepest 
 melancholia. But the jailers were careful to deprive 
 me of my pocket-knife and everything else by which 
 it was possible to do myself harm. Even while at 
 meals, I was continuously observed lest I utilize the 
 table knife on my body. 
 
 "Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, 
 He knows you not, ye heavenly powers!" 
 
 Before I experienced it, I did not believe an 
 individual could survive years of such depression. 
 
196 Absurd Legal Superstitions. 
 
 But, as you see, Ralph, it turned my hair white. For- 
 tunately it has not rendered me bald or wrinkled. 
 
 And the judge's charge was so absurd: "The 
 crime of which you, Frank White, have been convicted, 
 is of such a disgusting character that it can not even be 
 defined!" 
 
 To think of relegating an individual to state's 
 prison on a charge that no one comprehended ; that no 
 one had ever been permitted even to investigate — 
 • because the subject is beyond investigation, no intel- 
 lectual even being willing to define it ! 
 
 The judge said: "It is as heinous as murder, 
 because it strikes at the very existence of the race! 
 No one but a criminal of the deepest dye could descend 
 to it ! Frank White, you have been convicted of the 
 
 awful felony of race suicide!" Unreason and 
 
 prejudice! There was hardly an individual within 
 the hearing of the judge who had not been guilty of 
 race suicide, though in a different way from my own ! 
 And they for the most part deliberately, whereas I 
 was compelled by Mother Nature. They imprisoned 
 me for what they conceded to themselves: Following 
 Nature's behests other than solely for the perpetuation 
 of the race! 
 
 And then the day following my sentence, in the 
 yard of the Tombs jail, being thrust into an iron- 
 barred bus along with a score of hardened male crim- 
 inals — just as if I were myself a male! — to be driven 
 to the Grand Central to board a train for Sing Sing. 
 I, the goody-goody girlboy, having evolved into a felon ! 
 
 But my prosecution by self-righteous Christians 
 for what were really offences against no one — simply 
 to satiate these Christians' thirst for tormenting 
 
Publicity Would Remove a World of Woe. 197 
 
 people whose views differed from their own — had more 
 serious results than my five years in prison. My life 
 has been a wreck ever since. My having been incar- 
 cerated on a conviction so utterly loathsome to the 
 ordinary mind — because it has never been permitted 
 access to the truth of the matter and is governed 
 solely by mediaeval bias — completely alienated every 
 member of my family, who now regarded me as dead, 
 and disinherited me on the ground of deepdyed hy- 
 pocrisy and degeneracy. If we encountered one an- 
 other on the street, they would not speak. 
 
 When liberated from Sing Sing, I was compelled 
 to adopt a new appellation and strike out into a new 
 field of labor, where it has been possible only with 
 difficulty to make ends meet. 
 
 As for Tony, he escaped to parts unknown immedi- 
 ately following my arrest. My deprivation of his 
 friendship was the severest blow of all, for he had 
 shown himself so devoted — but only, as results dem- 
 onstrated, because of the fortune he derived from me. 
 He merely left a memo declaring he would write me 
 some day, but never effectuated his promise. 
 
 If only the Javerts who prosecute Nature's step- 
 children realized the world of woe they thereby 
 occasion these most unfortunate of mankind, they 
 would reflect twice before inaugurating the prose- 
 cution. But society prohibits the reasons for the 
 conduct of bisexuals becoming known. Which know- 
 ledge would prove a death blow to such prosecution. 
 
^ngeio — ^P%Uts 
 
 I. Angelo Angevine's Debut as Public Female- 
 Impersonator. 
 
 That fancy masculine name was only an alias, 
 androgynes having a penchant for such as are musical 
 and of exalted connotation. Further, its first element 
 was after Michelangelo, an arch-bisexualist. 
 
 In 1895, Angelo-Phyllis divulged what I have here 
 recorded as nearly as I can remember. As I said in 
 the first chapter of this book, I remember only the 
 general outlines of the originals of the monologues I 
 give. But I have listened to numerous confessions of 
 the sort of which I now present a sample. Where 
 definite memory fails me, I have had recourse to my 
 sea of general memories of the way the hermaphroditoi 
 talked, how they looked upon life, what they did, and 
 what befell them. I aim at a fairly full, but essentially 
 true, portrayal of the inner history and life experience 
 of cultured female-impersonators who were my bosom- 
 friends during my own heyday in that avocation in the 
 Rialto. In order to economize the reader's attention, 
 I present all of Angelo-Phyllis's life story as if con- 
 fessed to me at one sitting. 
 
 In referring to Frank White it seems more 
 natural to use the masculine alias and pronoun, but 
 
 [198] 
 
Cross-Dressing. 199 
 
 the feminine with Phyllis. For the latter was con- 
 spicuously womanish : beardal growth sparse and al- 
 ways clean-shaven, if not eradicated ; breasts as large 
 as in some women; hips very broad; spine dispropor- 
 tionately long and legs correspondingly short. "His- 
 her" body approached the feminine to a higher degree 
 than that of any other androgyne I ever set eyes on 
 with the possible exception of myself. Phyllis sur- 
 passed me in meagreness of beardal growth, sissie 
 voice, feminine strut and gestures, and craze and taste 
 for feminine finery. As a cross-dresser and female- 
 impersonator, the bisexual now to be portrayed was 
 one of the two or three extreme hermaphroditoi, while 
 ranking low in erotic furor. 
 
 [In a physical male, cross-dressing is the instinc- 
 tive wearing of feminine apparel, or, in default, of 
 the loudest and fanciest male styles. In a physical 
 female, it is similar adoption of masculine habiliments, 
 or in default, of feminine attire and aspect approach- 
 ing the masculine as nearly as possible: hair bobbed, 
 stiff linen collar, a man's neck scarf, and always 
 severely plain tailor-made waist and skirt. The reader 
 will recall such photographs of brilliantly intellectual 
 women, particularly authoresses. Cross-dressing is 
 generally an earmark of sexual intermediacy. It is 
 not at all due — as bigots claim — to moral depravity, 
 but entirely to irreproachable instinct. It is not at 
 all due to childhood's training, such as the stories of 
 parents' bringing up their boy or girl as a girl or a boy 
 when they particularly wished a female or a male heir. 
 Such child, as soon as he or she became old enough, 
 would wholeheartedly rebel against such a travesty. 
 In nearly every case, cross-dressing is due to the fact 
 
200 Phyllis's Antecedents. 
 
 that Nature injected a psyche of the one sex into a 
 corpus of the other. The cross-dresser is not usually 
 conscious of the oddity of taste for apparel. His or 
 her -manner of dressing indicates what he or she 
 considers artistic. All ultra-androgynes — such as 
 made up the membership of the Cercle Hermaphrodi- 
 tos — would always, if society permitted, clothe them- 
 selves as women.] 
 
 In 1895, Angelo-Phyllis was a plump little body 
 looking to be a decade younger than "his-her" thirty- 
 three, and of decidedly brunette, Mediterranean type. 
 
 Ralphie, mon cheri, the sexual cripple now speak- 
 ing was born in 1862 and brought up in a town of 
 50,000 within 300 miles of New York City. I did not 
 move here until twenty. As soon as I became finan- 
 cially independent of father, I chose New York as the 
 stage for my career because only in a great city can 
 an instinctive female-impersonator give his over- 
 whelming yearnings free rein incognito and thus keep 
 the respect of his every-day circle. 
 
 Father was one of the leading lawyers in my home 
 town and wanted me in his office, for he seemed blind 
 to my being a sissie. But just because of this fate, I 
 could not stand living in my home town. Further- 
 more, I had no taste for law, and pined only one 
 year in father's law office after leaving high-school. 
 I was all for Art, with a capital A! Art! Art! 
 Which taste turned me into millinery channels as soon 
 as I began life in New York in 1882. 
 
 Excepting the years that George Greenwood was 
 with me as "adopted son," I have in New York lived 
 
Not Willingly Half-and-half. 201 
 
 all by myself in a 5-room apartment. Thus I have 
 been able to transform myself into a young woman and 
 set out for a female-impersonation spree without any 
 one getting wise. 
 
 If I had had my say at birth, Ralphie, my lot 
 would have been that of a full-fledged woman, or, less 
 to be wished, a virile man. Not half-and-half. But 
 at twenty I cut out the foolishness of all the time 
 shedding tears over my fate. Those tears were chief- 
 ly due to the world's forbidding a bisexual's living 
 according to his-her nature. I could not assume the 
 responsibilities of a man and pay court to women — 
 an ordeal so horrible, but expected of me if I stayed 
 in my home town. I balked at having my life forced 
 into a masculine groove. In New York one can live 
 as Nature demands without setting every one's tongue 
 wagging. 
 
 I was unconscious ■ of sex until my fourteenth 
 year. Up to that age, I went to pay school. My dozen 
 schoolmates — including four sisters — were all of the 
 goody-goody type. No one ever tried to seduce me. 
 
 From fourteen to eighteen I went to public high- 
 school. Several boys hugged and kissed me now and 
 then. While I liked this, I shrunk away for shame. 
 Now for the first time I felt sorry I was a boy. I stole 
 a sister's discarded garb, from corset to hat, which I 
 kept under lock and key in my room and put on now 
 and again in order to strut before a full-length mirror 
 and feast my eyes on myself as female-impersonator. 
 Because of shame, I never told a soul. 
 
 So counter to the fate of most hermaphroditoi, I 
 was a virgin until the beginning of my female-imper- 
 
202 Dressing for a Spree. 
 
 sonation sprees. Because in high-school, morbid 
 bashfulness kept me from becoming well acquainted 
 with a single boy. Down to twenty I lived as sheltered 
 a life as any girl. I had really never been under any 
 kind of temptation. 
 
 Ralphie, mon cheri, I can never forget the entire 
 day spent in getting together my woman's wardrobe 
 on arrival in New York. I went to a ladies' store in 
 the Ghetto. I lacked the cheek to buy feminine finery 
 uptown. I gave the Russian Jewess the usual hoax 
 of amateur theatricals. And women are so dense as 
 to believe it! She helped hugely to the end of my 
 being able to turn myself into a stunning soubrette. 
 
 An evening or two later, in my flat, I dressed for 
 my first spree. I touched up eyebrows with a stick 
 of charcoal and cheeks with rouge; applied padding 
 where needed, laced on a corset, and adjusted a sou- 
 brette's wig. Lastly I put on my art gown, pinned on 
 a picture hat, threw an opera cloak about me, and was 
 ready to set out. 
 
 On my sprees I have always been careful to avoid 
 a clue to my identity. No one would have ever learned 
 who I really am even if I had been sent to Sing Sing. 
 Since the world thinks female-impersonation utterly 
 disgraceful, I had to spare my family all risk. 
 Furthermore, they themselves would disown me if 
 they ever learned of my mania for cross-dressing and 
 female-impersonation. 
 
 It is bitter to be so misjudged ! And people balk 
 at being set right! While I get much joy out of life, 
 I often feel crushed to earth when seeing how I am 
 scorned, and now and again weep a full hour. When, 
 
The Bowery a Magnet. 203 
 
 in the pride of their manly vigor, the virile throw at 
 me a glance full of hatred or of ridicule, I feel like 
 killing myself! 
 
 I always closed my hall-door noiselessly and used 
 the stairs. The elevator boy might have recognized 
 me in my disguise. If, on the several flights, I heard 
 an approaching footstep, I would slink for a moment 
 to a dark corner of the spacious hall. Reaching the 
 street, I had my regular hiding place for my key and 
 a yellow back. It was most necessary to be able to 
 let myself in on my late return, when the street door 
 was locked, instead of ringing up the janitor. 
 
 On my first spree, Ralphie — as on all for several 
 years — I boarded an elevated train and alighted at a 
 Bowery station. Several times in later years, I spied 
 acquaintances of my every-day world either on the 
 train or on the Bowery. I always gave them a wide 
 berth, although having a great advantage in means of 
 recognition. 
 
 And why, on my very first spree, did I seek the 
 Bowery, Ralphie? Because only a few weeks before, 
 in my home town, I had seen a comic opera staged on 
 that avenue, its keynote the oft repeated refrain : 
 
 "The Bowery! The Bowery! 
 There they say such things! 
 
 And they do such things! 
 
 The Bowery! The Bowery! 
 
 I'll never go there any more!" 
 
 So I was dead crazy to bring to pass there the fe- 
 male-impersonation sprees of which I, for several 
 years, had had merely waking dreams in my home 
 town. Such realization was why I moved to New York. 
 
204 The Goody-Goody Transformed. 
 
 It was, mon cheri, all because I wanted to live within 
 half-an-hour's journey of the enchanting old Bowery! 
 
 On my first spree, I made my way up and down 
 the crowded sidewalks for an hour, staring with all 
 my eyes at the brilliantly lighted fronts of beer-gar- 
 dens, the many gaudily dressed girls strutting up and 
 down all alone, but, most of all, the sporty-looking 
 youthful laboring men seeking their evening's fun. 
 How longingly and beseechingly I gazed into the 
 latter's eyes! A hundred times I had accosting 
 words on the end of my tongue. I but barely lacked 
 the brass for utterance, notwithstanding that in my 
 every-day life I had always been morbidly bashful. 
 How I wished I were acquainted with at least one of 
 these powerfully built — and, to me at least, bewitch- 
 ingly handsome — foreign-looking young fellows! 
 
 Who, mon cheri, that knew me as a goody-goody 
 boy in my home town, always going to Bible school 
 twice on Lord's day, and not merely once as nearly 
 all children of pious parents, would have foretold 
 that some day I would be tapping the sidewalks of 
 America's greatest red-light district as a common 
 strumpet? 1 
 
 Doctors claim to understand such as me a priori 
 and are too squeamish to investigate. They would say 
 I am insane. I have never shown any sign of a 
 diseased brain, nor has there been any taint of insanity 
 
 1 In the year of writing (1921) sight-seeing busses feature 
 the Bowery at night. Years ago that formerly quaintest of 
 New York's streets lost most of its character as red-light and 
 amusement center for New York's manual-laborer foreign 
 stock. For a brief history of New York's bright-light districts 
 since 1800, see the author's RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD, 
 in its Table of Contents. 
 
The "Rabbit:' 205 
 
 in my family. Ours, mon cheri, is simply the case 
 of half-and-half as to sex. The only taint in my 
 family is that father is somewhat womanish : falsetto 
 voice, sissie mannerisms, and never any mind for 
 things thoroughly masculine. He ought never to have 
 married to perpetuate, and probably strengthen, his 
 own mild sexual intermediacy. 
 
 As I walked the Bowery on that first spree, I 
 was puzzling my mind as to which of the brightly 
 lighted dance-halls or the dark and fearsome dives — 
 through whose doors I saw pass only sailors, gutter- 
 snipes, and slovenly gangsters — would be the best 
 stage for my virgin effort at female-impersonation. 
 At last I slipped into the least prosperous-looking and, 
 to the stranger, most uninviting, dance-hall, the no- 
 torious "Rabbit." And why the "Rabbit"? Because 
 it looked to be the most crime-inviting of all the 
 dance-halls. I had stood and watched as there passed 
 in and out the most criminal-faced of the Bowery boys : 
 coal-heavers, dock-rats, and fierce-and-cruel-stalking 
 gunmen — not to speak of the poor, deluded "fallen 
 angels." 
 
 I dropped into a chair. Almost in less time than I 
 can tell it, four youthful coal-heavers came up grin- 
 ning : "Hello Bright Eyes !" 
 
 Those three words were the most soulful, the most 
 infatuating, that had ever fallen on my ears. I was 
 also delighted because so lucky as to take in, right off, 
 some of the many bewitching Bowery boys I had 
 stared at that night, and cement them to myself. I 
 smiled back : "Hello !" 
 
 For the next few hours, I was in hitherto un- 
 dreamed-of bliss because of being wooed by all four in 
 
206 Phyllis Finds "Herself." 
 
 their delightfully wild and rough way. Ever since 
 my later teens, I have always yearned to be treated by 
 young fellows as a girl, and on my female-impersona- 
 tion sprees now and again, I have had such yearnings 
 fully met. On that debut at the "Rabbit," I was for 
 the first time in my life with sexual counterparts 
 before whom I could be myself because they did not 
 know who I was. And they treated me as their sexual 
 opposite. They danced with me in turn. Only after 
 four hours, I had to own up that I was not an out-and- 
 out female. But that knowledge seemed to count for 
 nothing with these lovesick coal-heavers. 
 
 Already two hours before, I had felt that I had 
 had more than enough flirtation for one night. All my 
 efforts to get away, however, were useless. At two 
 A. M., the "Rabbit's" doors were locked. I had to 
 allow one of my beaux to escort me somewhere: to 
 the Grand Central waiting-room, for there I would be 
 safe. I now warned my beau that if he did not leave 
 me, I would sit there for a week. But it took him two 
 more hours to give up all hope of my yielding to his 
 goodhearted pleas. 1 
 
 Five minutes after he left, I sought the street. 
 I turned half-a-dozen corners, lurking a minute around 
 each to see if the coast was clear. I then boarded a 
 car. I slowly dragged myself up the three flights of 
 
 i A warning to any unsophisticated androgyne who may be 
 moved to an impersonation spree in a red-light district. It is 
 necessary to go slow and be ultra-cautious. Numerous andro- 
 gynes have been murdered by gangsters. Frank-Eunice, 
 Angelo-Phyllis, and myself were exceptionally fortunate. Every 
 time an androgyne puts himself in the power of a stranger 
 gangster, it is at the risk of murder. Several times I myself 
 have been half-murdered. A poverty-stricken aspect and con- 
 cealment of one's culture constitute the best protection. By no 
 means show fight if assaulted. 
 
Leader of a Bowery Gang. 207 
 
 stairs and noiselessly let myself into my flat. Tired 
 out, I threw myself on the bed only half undressed 
 and slept until noon. 
 
 But, mon cheri, I had now found myself. For 
 seven years afterward, I sought the "Rabbit" or the 
 "Squirrel" once every other week, giving the rest of 
 my time to business or self -culture. One evening out 
 of fourteen was all I could spare for the female side 
 of my being. But the balance of my waking hours 
 were filled with blissful thoughts of my flirtations — 
 memories which will last as long as I. These sprees 
 have been to me the first thing in life. I would have 
 given up anything else for them. When now and again 
 something has blocked my fortnightly spree, I would 
 be the most melancholy person in New York. 
 
 On the Bowery, I always went with the same gang 
 of about a dozen savages. If any one took a look at 
 me, Ralphie — so soft-spoken, so chicken-hearted, so 
 wishy-washy — they wouldn't set me down as leader 
 of a Bowery gang, would they? But that's just what 
 I once was. All the members of my gang were of 
 foreign parentage, sturdy, possessed of well chiselled 
 features, and tolerably clean. I found nothing dis- 
 gusting about them. None had had more than three 
 years' schooling, or the least training in morality or 
 religion. Nevertheless they were not a bad lot; far 
 from being as evil-minded as the upper class would 
 judge from the outside. None was more than twenty- 
 five while a member of my gang, and none bright 
 enough to earn his bread at an occupation of higher 
 grade than coal-heaver. 
 
 The average age remained low because one after 
 another settled down in marriage, having brought to 
 
208 Androgynes' Favorites Fortunate. 
 
 an end his sowing of wild oats, and some budding 
 gangster took his place with me. 
 
 On my fortnightly hegiras, I was well supplied 
 with money so that I could give all a first-rate treat 
 in exchange for their wonderful kindness. They kept 
 good friends because I loaded them with gifts. Only 
 after seven years, a born criminal, who had happened 
 to worm his way into my gang, now and again sought 
 to dog me home. Twice I had to sit for an hour in 
 the Grand Central waiting-room to get him off my 
 trail. Up to that time no one had broken my firm 
 command that I should not be tracked the moment I 
 chose to fade away for a fortnight. For I was like 
 a good fairy — in the twinkling of an eye bobbing up 
 in the midst of my gang, gathered by appointment in 
 the "Rabbit," and a few hours later as wierdly drop- 
 ping out of sight. Of course I could not let any of 
 the gangsters find out in what part of the city I lived. 
 At last, to put a stop to high-handed and high-figured 
 blackmail by this one rascal, and, most of all, to 
 escape murder, I was forced to say good-by forever to 
 the whole Bowery. Of course I did not dare let even 
 the most trustworthy gangster know that I was never 
 to see him again. It pained me fearfully to leave them 
 in the lurch, but I could do nothing else. 
 
 I henceforth made the Rialto my stamping-ground 
 when yielding my bisexual body to the woman in me. 
 And fortunately, for I thus met Roland and the 
 other hermaphroditoi who had likewise turned to the 
 Rialto to blow off now and again their ordinarily pent 
 up, but at last overwhelming, craze for female-imper- 
 sonation. 
 
Angelo — Phyllis. 209 
 
 II. Jailed for Wearing Petticoats. 
 
 A scrape that I like to tell about, mon cheri, 
 although very bitter in the happening, is my only 
 arrest for flaunting myself in feminine finery. Don't 
 you think a jail a queer home for a wishy-washy 
 gentleman and art connoisseur? A softy whose swat- 
 ting a fly was the worst act he was ever guilty of, and 
 he almost had to weep when he did that. 
 
 Ever since driven from the Bowery six years ago, 
 I have, one evening out of fourteen, clad in my beloved 
 feminine finery, tried to get on the string strange 
 young fellows in the Rialto ladies' parlors. My nerves 
 need such a lark now and again. Otherwise years 
 ago I would have gone crazy or killed myself. 1 In 
 my later teens, while living in my home town, where 
 I had to crucify my cross-dressing and female-imper- 
 sonating instincts, I was its most melancholy being. 
 Because I, a female soul, was imprisoned in a male 
 body. How dark life looked from inside my male 
 prison ! How I pined to be free ! To have my soul 
 wholly clothed in woman's bone and flesh instead of 
 man's for the most part — the latter so hated in my own 
 body, but slavishly worshipped when breathing out 
 
 1 Just the day I retyped the above (Jan. 24, 1921) I read 
 how a girl-boy of eighteen committed suicide in New York City 
 by jumping from a thirty-five foot bridge upon railroad tracks. 
 Adolescent androgynes are continually putting an end to their 
 lives because bitterly persecuted merely on account of their 
 bisexuality and most unfeelingly told by their closest associates 
 that they are deeply depraved, and because prohibited by the 
 leaders of thought from acquiring scientific knowledge of their 
 idiosyncrasy. 
 
210 Regimentals Over 'powering. 
 
 yells of joy in sport or the cry to battle and the clash 
 of arms! 
 
 One evening five years ago in the Rialto I ran 
 across two youthful artillerymen from Fort Q and 
 spent the evening with them. Regimentals have al- 
 ways overpowered me. Even when I was as young as 
 ten, when an acquaintance enlisted in the national 
 guard, his mere donning the regimentals brought 
 about, in my eyes, a magic transformation. If already 
 handsome, the young fellow became supremely, un- 
 earthly enchanting. If plain and unattractive in 
 civilian dress, he grew handsome. Blue clothing and 
 brass buttons surely bring out whatever charm was 
 born in a young fellow. Furthermore, his taste for 
 warfare, shown by his volunteering, proves him a 
 demigod. For I think warfare the highest function 
 of the real man. 
 
 Whenever I catch sight of a youthful soldier, 
 I rivet my gaze every second possible, even halting at 
 the curb to look back at the wonderful vision. I yearn 
 to fling myself at the soldier's feet and cry out my 
 worship of all his magic traits. As the vision fades 
 away, a pang goes through my heart that he must pass 
 out of my life forever and I never be able to make 
 known to him that for the rest of my days I shall be 
 continuously burning incense in my heart to his mem- 
 ory. 
 
 Ralphie, I am overwhelmed when I call to mind 
 the hundreds of the cream of physical youngmanhood 
 with whom I have flirted, and whom I wholeheartedly 
 loved! I have to weep at thinking that the way the 
 world is made, I must be forever barred from them. 
 In spirit, I am eternally joined, knit, dovetailed to 
 
Eternally Dovetailed. 211 
 
 every man of them, but in the flesh, must never lay 
 eyes on the demigods again. How I wish I could have 
 continued to heap blessings upon them and make their 
 sojourn on earth happy! But I am not God! In the 
 next world, how I wish, as a reward for my always 
 having tried in this to make my associates happy, I 
 might be placed by Providence in the position of a sort 
 of sub-deity to the hundreds of rough, uncultured 
 young bachelors whom I have made proteges in this 
 life, in order that I might be the means of affording 
 each the eternity of bliss I so covet for them!. . . . 
 
 I do not lose an opportunity to see a parade of the 
 national guard, and particularly of regular soldiers, 
 marines, and blue- jackets. I do not give a straw to 
 see any other type of men marching. But while wit- 
 nessing warriors stalk by, I am seized with a craze 
 to prostrate myself in the roadway and have those 
 fierce, pugnacious young tigers — as they tramp, tramp, 
 tramp ! — trample upon me until dead. 
 
 The two artillerymen I met in the Rialto begged 
 me to make an hegira out to the barracks to give a 
 female-impersonation before their buddies. One after- 
 noon I made the hour's journey, clad as an extreme 
 dresser of the gentle, and at the same time hare- 
 brained, sex. 
 
 Around five P. M., I knocked at my friends' bar- 
 racks. Being in woman's garb, I would not step in- 
 side, but jollied with them on the large porch. The 
 news spread that I was only a female-impersonator 
 and half-a-hundred crowded around, flirting for all 
 they were worth. That was, mon cheri, my apotheosis 
 — far above all other adventures. I was overjoyed at 
 hearing at one time from half-a-hundred demigod? 
 
212 Female-Impersonate Intoxication. 
 
 cries of admiration and affection. For I would sacri- 
 fice myself more for, and give more richly to, youthful 
 common soldiers than any other class of men. 
 
 When, after half-an-hour, the bugle sounded re- 
 treat, how overwhelming, how unearthly, how infinite 
 and divine, its notes ! The bugle-call, because closely 
 associated with the clash of arms and with that type 
 of human who shine as demigods, always lifts me up 
 into an unutterably blissful female-impersonate and 
 cross-dress intoxication. I seem to be raised to the 
 very zenith of the universe as the supreme woman, 
 the fairie QUEEN, and to have all the fighting men 
 that ever lived bowing low in worship of my feminine 
 attributes. During the minute that the bugle-call re- 
 sounds and reverberates, I live infinitely! I live out 
 a whole eternity ! 
 
 But to come down to earth again, Ralphie : When 
 I went away at the supper call, my two friends said 
 they would meet me in a beer-garden in a neighboring 
 village. It was the favorite evening resort of the com- 
 mon soldiers. My two friends arrived with four bud- 
 dies. Of the half-a-hundred patrons, none else, ex- 
 cepting several additional soldiers of my friends' 
 company who happened to drop in, knew, up to the 
 very last, that I was only impersonating a female. 
 
 Bu + toward eleven, some of my party had drunk a 
 drop too much. Their behavior became boisterous and 
 improper. When the waiters tried to curb them, a 
 terrible fight started. The waiters were themselves 
 ex-soldiers and born fighters. Heavy glass schooners 
 were thrown back and forth. I had to get under a 
 table. 
 
 After several minutes, two constables burst in and 
 
The Woman-Man. 213 
 
 put all my party under arrest. I had now to 'fess up 
 that I was not really a girl. My faltering words filled 
 the constables with disgust and hatred. This is not 
 to be wondered at, because village constables do not 
 know psychology like Bowery and Rialto policemen. 
 
 The seven of us were locked up for the night. The 
 next morning the Justice-of-the-peace discharged my 
 companions with a mere reprimand because members 
 of the army. But he was wild to punish me for putting 
 on woman's garb. He sent a constable with me to the 
 White Plains jail, where I was to spend thirty days, 
 or until I could pay a hundred dollars fine. The Jus- 
 tice thought I was a low-down poverty-stricken fairie 
 from New York's worst slums. I did not have the 
 brass to tell him I was really a person of good charac- 
 ter, a regular church attendant, well educated, and 
 able to pay the fine. 
 
 The jailer, however, was sorry for me. I felt safe 
 in telling him the worst of my secrets. I let him feel 
 my woman's breasts. That made him my best friend 
 and he helped me get into communication with my 
 New York lawyer. After only a second miserable 
 night in a cell, the lawyer paid my fine and escorted 
 me back to the city — even in my feminine "regimen- 
 tals," as he had forgotten to bring along one of my 
 male outfits. 
 
 After that scrape, I made an hegira to the bar- 
 racks now and again, but always in male garb. The 
 whole fort marvelled at the "woman-man," as they 
 called me. They always gave me a great time. Noth- 
 ing would I have liked better than to live with them in 
 the barracks as their most devoted slave. Because 
 they were my farthest opposites. 
 
214 Angelo-Phyllis. 
 
 III. George Greenwood. 1 
 
 Ralphie, I am now going to tell you about the 
 foremost specimen of young manhood I ever met. If 
 a man show had been held five years ago, on the model 
 of the horse show, the young fellow I am going to tell 
 you about would have won first prize. 
 
 You know that most of us hermaphroditoi have a 
 single soul-mate. Of course they are uncultured. 
 Mere diamonds in the rough. For the past four years, 
 George Greenwood, whom you have seen with me, has 
 been my own soul-mate. For while I have flirted with 
 many others, he alone has been like an adopted son — 
 as we older hermaphroditoi look upon our soul-mates. 
 At present, George is twenty-nine, and in outer at- 
 tractiveness, only a wreck of what he was when I 
 "adopted" him. 2 
 
 1 The reader might omit this chapter because thinking it 
 not a propos. It is given because describing an actual episode 
 in the life of the sexual cripple being depicted. It also paints 
 the type of fast young bachelor after whom the cultured ultra- 
 androgynes of New York commonly "run." To avoid any 
 chance of a suit for slander, I merely substitute the real name of 
 one of my own half-dozen New York favorites — the half-dozen 
 who will live forever in the sanctum sanctorum of my memory 
 — that one favorite who physically much resembled Phyllis's 
 "adopted son," but whose character was ideal. The real George 
 Greenwood — of immaculate beauty and charm, and unsurpassed 
 friendliness to a sexual cripple like myself. In the words of 
 Phyllis, I am "continuously burning incense in ray heart to his 
 memory." I would wish to confer on him immortality. 
 
 2 At the time I knew him slightly, he was very bald and 
 possessed a rather "passe" countenance. He was nearly six 
 feet tall, perfectly proportioned, and had a negroid complexion, 
 charcoal eyes, and the blackest of curly hair — that is, what was 
 left of it. He was apparently of Spanish extraction. Only 
 when he had his hat on was he still of entrancing appearance. 
 
George's Antecedents. 215 
 
 I must explain, mon cheri, that George is not well 
 bred. About twelve years ago a portrait painter of 
 my acquaintance ran across him selling papers on 
 Broadway. George was then only seventeen. At first 
 sight, the artist felt George's unique beauty and asked 
 him to pose. Later other artists did George in oils 
 and with the chisel. 
 
 He has never known who his parents were. For 
 he- was a foundling. When discharged from the 
 orphan asylum at fourteen, he was apprenticed to an 
 upholsterer. But on account of George's quick temper 
 and nasty tongue, he could hold no position more than 
 a month. When my friend ran across him, George's 
 thoroughly bad record had left him only one means of 
 earning his bread : selling papers. But ever since his 
 ideal physique was discovered by my friend, George's 
 path through life has been strewn with roses. 
 
 Four years ago I happened to lay eyes on George 
 as he posed in my friend's studio. Right away his lines 
 of face, head, limbs, and body — hitherto even un- 
 dreamed of — held me spell-bound and I took him into 
 my home. For I thought George was Michelangelo's 
 Adam stepped down into flesh and blood out of the 
 painting on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Angelo's 
 nude figures of youthful men have alone approached 
 George's ideal lines. 
 
 But he has been such a drunkard and high-liver 
 in general that his beauty — particularly his head and 
 face — is now far below par. For two years he has 
 not been hired as a model. And he does not want to 
 earn in any other way. He has leaned wholly on me 
 to keep up his life in the Rialto as all-around sport. 
 
216 
 
 Michelangelo's Adam. 
 
 I breathe to you, Ralphie, under pledge to keep 
 it forever locked in the chambers of your heart, that 
 George's face and figure, once driving me beside my- 
 self, have become hideous and loathsome. How I hate 
 his billiard-ball head ! In order to stand his presence, 
 
Androgyne Platonic Marriage. 217 
 
 I have to ask him to keep his hat on. And a man's wig 
 disgusts me even more than a bald pate. Three 
 months ago we stopped living together. I could no 
 longer put up with his all the time scolding and cursing 
 me, and spitting tobacco juice and vomit on the rugs. 
 While we see each other now and again — because he 
 wants a few yellow backs — we have come to hate the 
 very sight of one another. 
 
 Ralphie, I heartily wish I were forever rid of the 
 brute beast! It now comes hard, when I see nothing 
 of the hero in him, to fork over a roll of bills every 
 few days. Our relations the past year have been hard- 
 ly more than a case of blackmail. I do not wholly drop 
 him for fear of his telling abroad how I pass now as 
 a man and now as a woman. 
 
 Most of all I want to get out of George's clutches 
 because five months ago I met a wonderful young fel- 
 low whom I plan legally to adopt. When I took George 
 Greenwood, I planned the same thing. But his char- 
 acter proved so terrible ! I am now getting on in life, 
 mon cheri, and my health is delicate. I need a close 
 intimate in my home to wait on me during my many 
 sick days. It is difficult for any of us hermaphroditoi 
 to take a wife. One hates so to explain to a woman 
 that after marriage, the life must be that of brother 
 and sister. And no woman — excepting only the most 
 old-maidish — would marry under these conditions. But 
 I know one of us hermaphroditoi — before your time, 
 Ralphie — who did marry, after thirty, under that ar- 
 rangement, and only because he had political ambi- 
 tions, and his being known as a married man would 
 give pause to enemies who were backbiting him be- 
 cause of the indiscretions of his youth. This her- 
 
218 Androgynes Wish a Wife for "Sons" 
 
 maphroditos was one of the brightest of men and rose, 
 as a result, to one of the foremost posts in the nation. 
 But if he had not been married, the politicians and the 
 voters would have turned him down. A legal mar- 
 riage surely covers a multitude of sins. But I myself 
 have such a horror of women that I could not live with 
 one even as a sister. 
 
 I have a maiden sister, whom I could get as house- 
 keeper, and who would take the best of care of me. 
 But I can not receive her into my home for fear she 
 might discover my bisexuality. I could not allow a 
 servant to live in my flat any more than my sister. 
 For even at the age of thirty-three, I, although half 
 the time almost too feeble to drag myself about, do. 
 not feel like saying goodby forever to my female-im- 
 personation sprees. They are still such fun ; about all 
 I have to live for ! And God has made young fellows 
 so wonderful, so charming! I still admire their 
 beauty as much as I did ten years ago. And it is still so 
 easy to get them on the string, almost as easy as it was 
 ten years ago. But if I am able legally to adopt Calvin 
 — about whom I will tell you in a minute — I feel that I 
 then can, having him with me always in my home, al- 
 ways in my office, always travelling with me wherever 
 I go: I then can say goodby forever to female-imper- 
 sonation sprees. For he would be to me a husband as 
 well as a son. He would be everything to me! I 
 would live only in and for him ! Only to make him, his 
 female wife, and his offspring happy ! For I would not 
 put anything in the way of his taking a full-female wife 
 in addition whenever he felt like it, because a full- 
 fledged young fellow is restless without one. 
 
 Of course I could have another hermaphrodites 
 
Calvin Luther. 219 
 
 live with me, as Ruby, Berenice, and the Duchess live 
 together. But it has always been my fondest dream 
 to adopt as son a young fellow who comes up to my 
 ideal. 
 
 For several months I have had my ideal under 
 my eyes every day as stenographer in my millinery 
 house. As "women's men" are prone to take for pri- 
 vate secretary the prettiest face or "divinest" form 
 among the gentle sex, likewise / picked out the appli- 
 cant standing highest as an Adonis. He is only twenty 
 and possesses golden curly hail ; deep-set, marine-blue 
 eyes; and radiant red cheeks. From his having been 
 baptized "Calvin Luther" you can tell what kind of 
 parents and breeding he was blessed with. He is 
 thoroughly pure-minded and unspoiled, having, until 
 fifteen months ago, lived on a farm. 
 
 I slavishly worship the youth. The biased world 
 would tremble at the thought of the harm I would 
 surely (as they fancy) do this pearl of great price. 
 For he is truly an angel ; God's child ; very religious — 
 a trait so rare among the strongly virile. I have al- 
 ready made something of a confidant of him in order 
 to learn his feelings toward a woman-man. Most 
 young fellows with a puritan bringing up would turn 
 the cold shoulder. But I found Calvin Luther open to 
 reason. He told me he has always, as a good church 
 member, struggled against his wanting the gentle sex. 
 While at business school in a small city, he earned his 
 board by delivering for a baker in the early morning. 
 A natural thing followed upon his being rarely good- 
 looking. I barely wormed it out of him when I was 
 administering the third degree. He 'fessed up that a 
 number of servant girls where he delivered played on 
 
220 Prudery and Bigotry Now Regnant. 
 
 him the trick of Potiphar's wife on Joseph. Twice — 
 he 'fessed up with face as red as a beet — he did not 
 show Joseph's strength of character. And I did not 
 think the less of him. 
 
 And you, Ralphie, of course know that I would 
 never be guilty of anything that could bring the least 
 harm to this adored innocent. His health of body and 
 mind will not be damaged a particle. I shall give him 
 the best educational and cultural advantages. As I 
 have said, he will some day marry the girl of his choice, 
 and I shall live with the pair as a parent. He and his 
 children will be my heirs. 
 
 Is such an outlook for a poverty-stricken young 
 fellow just cause for Pharisees holding up their hands 
 in holy horror? 1 The sexually full-fledged cannot get 
 
 1 In the July, 1921, number of a prominent American 
 medical journal, I saw a tirade against androgynes, whom its 
 author declared merited no mercy, but ought to be crushed as 
 a social menace. The invective proved merely that its 
 physician-author clings to the sexual ethics of the Dark Ages, 
 and at the same time belongs to the mildly virile type. That 
 type lacks a superfluity of sexual vigor. It is inconceivable 
 that a young man of that type should be intimate with an 
 androgyne except for a rich reward — which ha^ occurred when 
 the individual androgyne was cut off from all access to the 
 ultra-sexed, toward whom alone he gravitates The mildly 
 virile young man shudders violently at the very thought and 
 is confident — a priori, as it is only a traditional phantasy — that 
 his vita sexualis, health, and morals would be seriously under- 
 mined. I concede, however, that such might be the case with 
 the mildly virile because possessing only a modicum of sexual 
 vigor (perhaps, for example, merely enough for relations with 
 his lawful wife once a fortnight or so) and because tending to 
 be overconscientious. I concede that the mildly virile's morals 
 would be damaged, simply because he fancies such relations the 
 unpardonable sin. If once in his youth overcome by the offer of 
 a "bonanza," he would ever afterwards regret the experience 
 and feel deep guilt. As I myself in my youthful verdancy, he 
 would cry out a thousand times: " 'O wretched man that I am, 
 who shall deliver me from the body of this death!' " And 
 because of his meagre sexual energy, he might possibly feel ill 
 
Phyllis "Passes On." 221 
 
 into their heads that we women-men are just as high- 
 minded and conscientious as themselves. They are 
 continually hurling insults — calling' us "degenerates." 
 But my only thought is to heap blessings on those 
 whom I worship. I have always lived up to the maxim : 
 Act in such a way as would be good if universally fol- 
 lowed. Those who through self-righteousness condemn 
 and crush me are a hundred times worse sinners. 
 Perhaps some day, mon cheri, the world will come to 
 believe that the actual presence of women-men in all 
 communities — which Nature brings about — is a dis- 
 tinct blessing to society in several ways. 
 
 Author's Note. — Within a year of the above con- 
 fessions, Angelo-Phyllis was found dead in "his-her" 
 apartment. The skull had been fractured with a ham- 
 mer. 
 
 effects physically. But that by no means proves that the ultra- 
 sexed would also feel them. And morally, the latter look upon 
 the experience as entirely natural and sinless — the same as the 
 eating of a piece of mince pie. Instead of ever regretting it, 
 they look back with satisfaction that they had the experience. 
 
 Mildly virile writers on sex forget that there exist tens 
 of thousands of men of far superior sexual energy. While 
 they themselves, for example, may care for the services of 
 their legal wife as seldom as twice a month, the tremendously 
 virile "fellow" is not satisfied with less than an opportunity 
 every night, and is at the same time "the husband of all 
 women." In my opinion, Philippics against the androgyne have 
 their basis only in prudery and bigotry. 
 
part jitx: 
 Hefoapaper Recounts of (JHurbcra of jAttbroggnes 
 
 
 Author's Note. — These excerpts from New York 
 dailies are presented in order to impress upon the 
 public that such murders of inoffensive androgynes 
 are a fairly common occurrence because that public has 
 tabooed, on the basis of prudery alone, enlightenment 
 of the general reader on the facts of androgynism. I 
 withhold names of journals and dates of issue, and 
 cover identities, out of respect for the victims and 
 their families. But I assure those families that one 
 of my present objects is to avenge, by enlightening the 
 public, the unmerited assassination of their dear ones 
 and thus prevent in the future such martyrdom of in- 
 nocents. The families have my most sincere sympa- 
 thy, particularly because I myself have several times 
 been brought near death's door in the manner in which 
 their unfortunate — but not in the least immoral — rela- 
 tives were put out of the way. 
 
 Each of the first three murders was apparently 
 the work of some prude not at all criminally minded, 
 but feeling himself the mandatory of society in ridding 
 the world of "a monster of deepdyed depravity," ac- 
 cording as he was taught by church and synagogue. 
 The harebrained prude had been prohibited by public 
 opinion from learning the truth that androgynism is 
 
 [222] 
 
Androgynes Not Sodomites. 223 
 
 solely a matter of abnormal psychology and anatomy, 
 and not at all immorality. The term which best calls 
 up the sensations of revulsion of such a murderer is 
 "sodomite." To its highly malodorous and fundamen- 
 tally false connotation and application can be traced 
 every year, in every corner of Christendom (particu- 
 larly puritan), murders of inoffensive androgynes. 
 The author's comments are in brackets. 
 
 I. Two Murder Mysteries Which, Strangely Alike in 
 Many Ways, Baffled All Efforts to Solve. 
 
 (Much condensed, and slightly edited for diction, by 
 
 author of The Female-Impersonators, from 
 
 article in a New York daily.) 
 
 VICTIMS WERE TWO ELDERLY BACHELORS OF MEANS, 
 LIVING IN THE SAME SECTION OF CITY — X AND Y 
 WERE BOTH FOND OF PERSONAL ADORNMENT AND 
 DISPLAY AND BOTH HABITUALLY CHOSE YOUNG MEN 
 AS ASSOCIATES — EACH WAS SLAIN IN HIS OWN 
 APARTMENT — ONLY TWENTY-NINE DAYS SEPARAT- 
 ED THE TWO MURDERS — MANY CIRCUMSTANCES OF 
 THE TWO CRIMES BORE CURIOUS RESEMBLANCE 
 
 Consideration of recent terrible crimes in New 
 York which have halted agents of justice at dead walls 
 of mystery must bring to mind the X-Y murders of a 
 little more than a year ago. They were committed 
 within five weeks, the scenes within a few blocks on 
 fashionable Murray Hill. 
 
 In both, extraordinary interest was stirred by the 
 maniacal savagery unleashed. The settings of the 
 
224 Androgynes Art Connoisseurs. 
 
 crimes were alike bizarre. The characters of both 
 victims were most peculiar, yet alike. And the men 
 had been friends. [Androgynes, in all large cities, 
 form little cliques like the Cercle Hermaphroditos.] 
 
 X was a bachelor of fifty-six, an electrical expert, 
 an art connoisseur, and collector of jewels and weap- 
 ons. Though in more than comfortable financial cir- 
 cumstances, he resided entirely alone, doing his own 
 housework [common manner of life of androgynes] 
 in a 6-room flat on the ground-floor of the Q Apart- 
 ments. [I know one androgyne who purposely chose a 
 ground-floor apartment in a house without hall-boy so 
 he could go and come in his disguise with less chance 
 of encountering other tenants.] He had made it his 
 home for ten years. [This proves his outward decen- 
 cy, as well, as liberality to blackmailers.] The artistic 
 luxury of its furnishings was striking. The walls were 
 galleries of fine old prints, original oils, and copies of 
 masters, and displayed a strange collection of swords, 
 sabres, and barbarian spears. [Well-to-do androgynes 
 possess the most highly ornamented homes of any 
 class of society. While congenitally too "yellow" 
 themselves to handle the weapons of warfare, such are 
 generally sexual fetishes with them, being symbols of 
 the highest function of the true man.] 
 
 In this handsome, lonely abode, the detectives 
 made a discovery of significance: X had lived in ex- 
 traordinary fear of the lawless invasion of his rooms. 
 [Cultured androgynes, realizing how bitterly they are 
 hated by prudes, live constantly under the sword of 
 Damocles. Every night they fall asleep in the fear 
 of being murdered. They are uncommonly careful in 
 locking themselves in. The author tries his locks twice 
 
Live under Sivord of Damocles. 225 
 
 before retiring. While a child, he, every night before 
 getting into bed, looked to see whether there was not 
 a murderer under it. Androgynes are extreme 
 cowards.] For he had used his expertness with deli- 
 cate electrical devices to set his rooms with a maze 
 of traps for any person who might try to enter it by 
 force or stealth. Doors, windows, etc., were invisibly 
 strung with delicate wires. With the controlling alarm 
 device set, scarcely an article might be touched without 
 the ringing of sharp bells of warning. 
 
 But that thieves were those of whom he lived in 
 dread was contradicted by other facts. X, far from 
 being a recluse, frequented hotels and cafes and was 
 prone to make chance acquaintances, especially of 
 young men, while going about extravagantly bejewelled 
 and habitually carrying a large roll of bills which 
 it was a pet vanity to display. 
 
 His social hours were spent almost entirely with 
 young men. He had been known to comment : "I keep 
 young because I associate with the young." The Q 
 servants said these young-men callers never behaved 
 boisterously. All were decorous and well dressed. [A 
 small proportion of cultured androgynes who live alone 
 in their own homes entertain there adolescents who 
 bear the earmarks of trustworthy gentlemen. X's 
 murderer could have been of no other type, but was 
 in addition an extreme prude so far as concerns homo- 
 sexuality. The cultured enjoin extreme noiselessness 
 so as not to arouse suspicions of co-tenants of the same 
 apartment house. The uncultured commonly receive 
 any adolescent at all in their homes because having no 
 fear of disgrace and blackmail. By "young men" the 
 author of the excerpt evidently means those from 
 
22C Androgyne Stamping Grounds. 
 
 eighteen to twenty-five, the age-group preferred, and 
 almost exclusively cultivated, by androgynes.] 
 
 The Q servants further said that X frequently 
 started alone on strolls, many times, however, return- 
 ing with a youthful companion, who would spend an 
 hour or two with the elderly host. [The favorite New 
 York localities for evening "strolls" of cultured andro- 
 gynes for scraping acquaintance with a strange Hercu- 
 les or Adonis are, in cold weather, the Broadway and 
 the Fourteenth Street Rialtos and cafes; and in sum- 
 mer, Madison Square, Union Square, the southerly 
 quarter of Central Park (the three park spaces most 
 frequented at night by idle adolescents who would be 
 glad to pick up a few dollars), the Battery (because 
 frequented by common soldiers), and other localities 
 frequented by uncommissioned warriors, the ideal oc- 
 cupation, as I have already said, for a real man in the 
 eyes of androgynes. In the case of X, the Q men- 
 servants probably saw through everything. The ser- 
 vant class often respect a cultured moneyed androgyne 
 who treats them well, and they act only in a protecting 
 capacity.] 
 
 Of woman visitors, there could be recalled but one 
 — whitehaired, a few years older than X, said to be an 
 aunt. 
 
 Investigators were astonished by the nicety, the 
 fond care, with which X had done his own housekeep- 
 ing. Floors, rugs, and every article were flawless of 
 dust. In spick and span appearance, thoughtful and 
 orderly arrangement of utensils, neatness of china 
 closets, refrigerator and provision store-room, a fea- 
 ture of which latter were shelves lined with jars cf 
 .homemade preserves labelled in handwriting, i;he 
 
Bent for Woman's Toil. 227 
 
 bachelor's kitchen was fit to excite a housewife's envy. 
 [Androgynes take naturally to woman's tasks.] 
 
 Discovery of the Murder 
 
 It was not discovered until many hours after com- 
 mission. At noon of [date omitted by author of The 
 Female-Impersonators] the Q janitor saw a light 
 shining out of a transom of X's. He was immediately 
 convinced such a methodical man would not have gone 
 away leaving the light turned on. He tried X's en- 
 trance and found it unlocked. He went to the room 
 where the light was burning. Stretched on the floor 
 beside a divan, with a couch pillow resting on the face, 
 was X. A few feet away was the sabre with which he 
 had been murdered. 
 
 The divan covers were half ripped off where the 
 falling man had clutched them as he was repeatedly 
 felled — repeatedly, for it was evident X had fought 
 hard for his life against the sabre-armed assassin. The 
 sabre had been ripped off the wall of the hall-way of 
 the apartment. The retaining wires were strong and 
 the hand must have been strong that snapped them. 
 [Androgynes cultivate only the best physically de- 
 veloped.] 
 
 The deduction was made that the assassin had not 
 entered X's home with the intent to murder. He was 
 pictured as having, in all probability, left his host in 
 the "den" and started down the hall to make his exit 
 from the flat when the resolution to attack and kill — a 
 resolution which the weapons on the wall may have 
 suggested — came suddenly upon him. Ripping the 
 weapon from the wall, he is pictured as having dashed 
 back to the "den" and surprised X with a fury of mur- 
 
228 Prudery Gone Insane. 
 
 derous attack. [X probably entertained at his home 
 for the first time that night his well dressed and ap- 
 parently trustworthy assassin. Only when the two ad- 
 journed to the "den" did X probably disclose his de- 
 sire, so nauseating to the unsophisticated and those 
 ignorant of abnormal psychology. Doubtless a minute 
 after the disclosure, the prude left X's side in insane 
 disgust, and on passing through the hall entertained 
 his first thought to do his "duty by society and put 
 this monster where he could corrupt no more young 
 men" — an absolutely unfounded way of looking at the 
 matter. I have myself scraped acquaintance with a 
 youthful Hercules, who would lead me on hypocriti- 
 cally, and when he got me where there could be no 
 witnesses, has half-murdered me because of disgust at 
 androgynism. My adventure with Harvey Green is 
 an example.] 
 
 Physical examination disclosed that despite his 
 fifty-six years, X possessed the preservation of a man 
 of thirty-five. [Perennial youth is an earmark of 
 ultra-androgynism.] 
 
 The autopsy showed that every character of blow 
 had been inflicted — deep stab wounds, slashes, and 
 fracturing strokes on the skull either with the broad 
 side or dull back of the sabre. The coat of X, who was 
 fully clothed when killed, had been slashed to tatters. 
 [The assassin wished not merely to kill, but to hack 
 X to pieces because of his loathing of androgynism. I 
 myself have not alone been half -murdered, but mutila- 
 tion has been practiced for its own sake. See page 
 132 of my Autobiography of an Androgyne.] 
 
Murdered by a Guest. 229 
 
 A Midnight Caller 
 
 X's condition of being fully clothed proves of 
 course that he had not yet retired. [It also indicates 
 that his assassin had repulsed his amorous advances 
 immediately after the pair entered the "den." On such 
 occasions, androgynes usually undress.] Further evi- 
 dence was that his web system of alarms had not been 
 set. It was his invariable custom, on retiring or 
 when he went out, to do this. There was no sign of 
 forcible entrance of the ground-floor apartment. 
 Therefore X is believed to have freely admitted the 
 man who was to murder him — probably such a chance 
 acquaintance as he appears frequently to have made in 
 his saunterings through the city's streets and visits 
 to its resorts. 
 
 The examination of medical experts resulted in 
 the hour of the crime being placed between nine and 
 eleven of the evening previous. 
 
 Made No Outcry 
 
 It being evident that X had survived the first at- 
 tack at least for a few minutes before he finally suc- 
 cumbed under the raining blows of the sabre, the police 
 were puzzled to understand why, with his life at stake, 
 the man did not make an outcry. There was only a 
 single wall separating the scene of combat from the 
 public lobby where were stationed throughout the 
 night a telephone operator and an elevator attendant. 
 Tests made showed that a shout of medium volume 
 from the "den" could be distinctly heard in the lobby. 
 The attendants were positive they had heard no calls 
 for help. 
 
230 Death Preferred to Disclosure. 
 
 One of the puzzles, therefore, was to determine 
 the character of X's murderous guest and the circum- 
 stances of his visit. Had X reason so grave for con- 
 cealment of the presence of his slayer as to prevent 
 him from calling for aid even with death immediately 
 upon him? [X's consciousness of being a sexual eccen- 
 tric would likely be an inhibition to his alarming those 
 who lived in the same house. He probably did not sus- 
 pect that the servants saw through everything. Be- 
 tween death and the disclosure to his co-tenants that 
 he was a sexual eccentric, he probably chose the form- 
 er.] None of the wounds was in his throat. The blow 
 that fractured his skull must have been among the last 
 as indicated by the evidence that X had fought his 
 slayer long and hard. 
 
 Motive Not Clear 
 
 A diamond ring, whose value must have been close 
 to $1,000, habitually worn, together with X's gold 
 watch and chain, were taken. Very little money was 
 found in his clothing, whereas it was known he usually 
 carried large sums. But there were at hand heavy 
 solid silver articles, and gold ornaments, and valuable 
 jewelry in a frail desk — none of which had been taken. 
 Only X's body had been stripped. The police were 
 convinced that the robbery was committed to conceal 
 another deeper motive, as suggested by the savage 
 maltreatment of X's body. 
 
 Whatever the motive, the murderer entered the 
 apartment unseen that night and departed unseen. 
 The police made haste to interview all persons whom 
 they could trace as having been associated with X. 
 There was a young sailor whom X had lately befriend- 
 
A Secret Guest. 231 
 
 ed and who had been his guest for several days. This 
 youth was traced to his ship and his presence aboard 
 the night of the murder established. 
 
 One clue was a bit of cardboard on which was 
 scribbled, in X's handwriting, the latter's address. It 
 looked as if made hastily for the guidance of the 
 stranger guest to X's apartment. [And in the apart- 
 ment thrown away as being no longer of use.] 
 
 No slightest clue to the identity of the slayer was 
 uncovered. 
 
 THE MURDER OF Y 
 
 On the night of [date omitted by author of The 
 Female-Impersonators] just twenty-nine days after 
 the murder of X, Y was slain in his home nearby. The 
 two murders instantly linked. For the two crimes pre- 
 sented an almost perfect parallel. The scene was the 
 same — an elaborately furnished "den." As with X, 
 Y's murderer had been his guest. A secret guest — in 
 that nobody saw him enter Y's residence, no sound be- 
 trayed him in the act of killing, and he managed to 
 leave the "den" and Y's house unobserved. 
 
 Of astonishingly the same stamp were X and Y. 
 Both were elderly bachelors and art connoisseurs. 
 [The latter an earmark of cultured androgynism.] 
 Both had specialized in the collection of ancient and 
 curious weapons. Both were addicted to an extrava- 
 gant display of jewelry on their persons. [Andro- 
 gynes are loud dressers.] Both lived in dread of at- 
 tack in their homes and had made elaborate prepara- 
 tions against the possibility. Inspection of the lives 
 of both found them oddly empty of attachment to or 
 
232 Loathing of Androgynes a Murder Motive. 
 
 association with women. Both had a disposition for 
 the society of much younger men, and had many such 
 acquaintances. 
 
 Living in the same neighborhood, frequenting the 
 same hotels and restaurants, visiting the same art gal- 
 leries and antique shops as they were tireless in doing, 
 it was rather to be expected that they were found to 
 have been close friends. 
 
 The indicated motive for both murders was rob- 
 bery but in both cases only the valuables used in per- 
 sonal adornment were stolen, while other jewels, and 
 silver and gold objects of art and service, plainly in 
 sight, were ignored. [Robbery being only a blind, 
 loathing of sexual eccentricity being the true motive.] 
 
 In only two particulars did the crimes differ : X 
 was hacked to death; Y was strangled by the bare 
 hands of his assailant. The marks of relentless fingers 
 were deeply imbedded in the victim's neck. The other 
 difference was that in Y's case, there had been no 
 struggle. He had had no chance to put up a fight for 
 his life. He had been taken by surprise and the stran- 
 gler's grip been clamped on his throat before he could 
 make outcry. 
 
 Y was fifty-nine years old, and a native of rural 
 Illinois. He had prospered as owner of a fashionable 
 ladies' dress-making concern in New York. But he 
 had retired and at the time he was murdered was rent- 
 ing an ex-mansion of a millionaire, where he conducted 
 a boarding-house of the highest class. There were 
 twenty lodgers, but scores of additional persons living 
 in the aristocratic neighborhood took their meals at 
 Y's. He frequently organized card parties and dances 
 for his guests, and to these were always invited freely 
 
Murderer Mandatory of Society! 233 
 
 young men in war service on leave in New York. 
 [Warriors are androgynes' special heroes. A common 
 soldiers' and sailors' club was situated next door, 
 where Y apparently made many acquaintances.] 
 
 Y's body was found at seven A. M. [date here 
 omitted] by George, one of Y's eleven negro servants. 
 [Y conducted his establishment on the plan of a multi- 
 millionaire's residence.] It was George's daily duty 
 to go to his employer's room on the first floor, directly 
 over the kitchen, awaken him at seven, and serve him 
 breakfast in bed. On that morning, George, receiving 
 no reply to his knock, pushed the door open and entered 
 the elaborately furnished "den" and bedroom. 
 
 Strangled to Death 
 
 The bed was in order, and the body of Y on the 
 floor nearby was clad only in pajamas. [Apparently 
 the assassin had pretended he was going to retire with 
 Y. Therefore Y got into his night clothes, as also 
 probably the assassin. But just before the bed covers 
 would have been turned down the latter fulfilled his 
 mandate from society by "ridding New York of the 
 monster!"] An autopsy showed that indubitably Y 
 had been strangled to death. The deep, purple marks 
 on his throat were valueless as furnishing finger-print 
 evidence, but they did stamp the murderer's hands as 
 large and very strong. [Androgynes cultivate only the 
 best physically developed.] Y had been suddenly at- 
 tacked by the strangler and immediately choked into 
 helplessness, for nothing in the room had been dis- 
 turbed. He had been borne down to death on the very 
 spot where seized. 
 
234 A Trusted Murderer. 
 
 Y's "den" was the scene of many late-hour parties, 
 in which young men figured exclusively as guests. 
 Frequently also he returned very la + p with a single 
 companion. His late-hour guests were never boister- 
 ous and never gave caus£ for complaint by Y's refined 
 lodgers. 
 
 As in the case of X's apartment, Y's house gave 
 no evidence of a forcible entry. Physicians determined 
 that Y's death had occurred at eleven the night before 
 the body was discovered. At that hour the outer doors 
 of the house were always locked. Many of the lodgers 
 and some of the negro servants had not yet retired, and 
 must have heard, it would seem, a ringing of the door- 
 bell. None did. 
 
 Probably an Expected Guest 
 
 The conjecture was consequently made that Y had 
 appointed a late meeting with his murderous guest and 
 given him a key to his house that he might enter quiet- 
 ly. Of fully twenty-five persons in the house at the 
 time, not one heard the slighest sound of distress or 
 noise of any kind from the "den" at the hour of the 
 murder. 
 
 Even more futile than in the case of X were the 
 efforts of the investigators to round up the many 
 young men [evidently bachelors from eighteen to twen- 
 ty-five] whose acquaintance Y was constantly making. 
 
 Three diamond rings of a value of $2,000 had been 
 stripped from the dead man's fingers, and his gold 
 watch and chain were taken. But as at X's assassina- 
 tion, many articles of jewelry and of gold and silver 
 easily accessible were not touched. 
 
A Conscientious Murderer. 235 
 
 Alike in mystery, the cases of both X and Y mani- 
 fest the strong likelihood that the same man effected 
 both murders, with a suggestion of a deeper motive 
 than robbery, of a desire to do violence aroused to 
 frenzy, judging by the stark ferocity with which both 
 crimes were committed. 
 
 [The motive of course was to rid New York of 
 androgynes ; at least, extensively promiscuous ones. It 
 is quite likely the same prude was guilty of both mur- 
 ders. Perhaps at first the assassin had known merely 
 through hearsay that both X and Y were sexual ec- 
 centrics. But he was reasonable and merciful enough 
 not to put them out of the way until he possessed ocu- 
 lar evidence. (I have myself associated with torturers 
 who would act only on such.) For X's and Y's mur- 
 derer was solemnly and conscientious 1 y acting as the 
 mandatory of socisty. 
 
 [From the murder of X he had learned that an 
 androgyne might put up resistance. Therefore in the 
 case of his second quarry, Y, he must adopt a safer, 
 more sudden, and an absolutely noiseless means of exe- 
 cution. In sabre-slaughtering, there was too much 
 risk of the victim calling for help. Moreover, X lived 
 all by himself, whereas Y's residence was alive with 
 people. Androgynes like to be treated by their virile 
 associates as if women, and the ultra-virile always 
 humor that liking. The assassin probably started in 
 with a pretended "love" embrace, and, before Y could 
 realize, turned it into a strangling death-grip. 
 
 [I will admit that X and Y were extensively pro- 
 miscuous. But they could not have been particularly 
 intemperate because my own experience proved that 
 excessive venery soon wrecks the health of an andro- 
 
236 X and Y Offenceless. 
 
 gyne. As both were close to sixty, their lives had 
 doubtless been temperate. They had probably in- 
 dulged (the more humiliating role in fellatio) not more 
 than once a week throughout their adulthood. But al- 
 though they apparently sought intimacy with almost 
 every adolescent Adonis or Hercules (only one out of 
 every twenty adolescents could qualify under either of 
 these types) whose acquaintance they made, they 
 harmed these youthful rakes not in the least; nor did 
 they, throughout their lives, bring detriment to any 
 one else since all androgynes possess the inoffensive 
 psyche of women. For proof of the harmlessness 
 to an adolescent of an androgyne intimate, I refer to 
 my Autobiography of an Androgyne, pages 88, 89, 
 and 194. 
 
 [Far from the adolescent suffering harm, he is 
 loaded with material benefits by the well-to-do andro- 
 gyne who worships him. He is pre-eminently a "lucky 
 dog." 
 
 [X and Y were entirely irresponsible for being an- 
 drogynes and sexual eccentrics. Absolutely no harm 
 came to any individual or to society collectively 
 through their condition or instinctive functioning. 
 They did not deserve that any one interfere with their 
 life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.] 
 
Newspaper Accounts of Murders. 237 
 
 II. Z Mystery Baffles Inquiry at Every Angle. 
 
 (Much condensed, and slightly edited for diction, by 
 author of The Female-Impersonators, from 
 article in a New York daily.) 
 
 NO PROOF OF SUICIDE AND NO MOTIVE FOR MURDER 
 FOUND IN CASE OF YOUTH STRANGLED ABOARD HIS 
 OWN POWER YACHT — FRIENDS INSIST DEATH WAS 
 AN ASSASSIN'S WORK — DRESSING OF THE BODY IN 
 WOMAN'S CLOTHING FURNISHES NO CLUES TO 
 FAMILY OR POLICE— FULL DETAILS FOR STUDENTS 
 OF CRIME TO STUDY 
 
 After two weeks of many-sided investigation, the 
 death of Z remains as great a mystery as on the 
 evening of [date omitted by author of The Female- 
 Impersonators] when his mother discovered him 
 strangled aboard his power yacht in New York Harbor 
 dressed in woman's apparel. 
 
 "No reason for suicide and no motive for 
 murder — no proof of suicide, no positive evidence of 
 murder." Such is the conclusion reached by the po- 
 lice, private investigators employed by Z's family, and 
 by newspaper reporters who have worked on the baf- 
 fling case unique for its mass of contradictory theories 
 and circumstances. 
 
 [And to the present writer, himself an androgyne 
 and instinctive cross-dresser, the strongest of reasons 
 for suicide and the strongest of motives for murder! 
 Androgynes, because so terribly misjudged by their 
 
238 A Psychopathic Individuality. 
 
 associates, are the most melancholy and prone to 
 suicide of any class of mankind. Moreover, they are 
 often murdered on the strong motive of intense loath- 
 ing felt by prudes ignorant of abnormal psychology, in 
 whose eyes the androgyne is a "sodomite," with all 
 the terrible, though false, connotation of that term. 
 Such prudes believe themselves mandatories of society 
 to rid the world of the "monster." The present writer 
 did some detective work in this case "on his own hook." 
 He ascertained that in the circle of those who knew Z 
 by sight but were not personal friends, he had the 
 reputation of being a fellator. I interviewed several 
 of this circle, but did not dare thrust myself into that 
 of Z's close friends.] 
 
 The view of the police generally is that the death 
 was clearly suicide. But as to how the suicide was 
 accomplished, police officers hold theories no two of 
 which agree. 
 
 Family Sure Z Was Murdered 
 
 Z's family, his closest chum, and his friends gen- 
 erally, maintained from the first, and still believe, that 
 Z was murdered aboard the yacht by an assassin who 
 secreted himself in one of the cabins and afterwards 
 escaped in a fashion equally mysterious. 
 
 The fact that young Z wore woman's clothing is 
 to the police the strongest evidence of suicide and 
 supplies to them evidence of a psychopathic individu- 
 ality. [That fact is to myself the strongest evidence 
 of murder since I have repeatedly witnessed the in- 
 tense revulsion of prudish bigots at any cross-sex 
 phenomenon, and have been myself half-murdered 
 solely on this incentive.] 
 
Families Ignorant of Bisexual Members. 239 
 
 Opposed to this is the most positive assertion 
 from Z's family and friends: (1) That he was a 
 normal boy in every respect. [In nearly every case 
 of a cultured androgyne in the past, his family have 
 never suspected anything because of the veil of silence 
 that the deluded public has insisted be thrown over 
 the phenomenon of androgynism and the consequent 
 absolute ignorance of the truth about this phenomenon 
 on the part of the entire Overworld excepting a hand- 
 ful of sexologists. Just to throw their associates off 
 the scent, some cultured androgynes purposely do some 
 courting of females, and have even contracted a 
 marriage (of course, Platonic) as mentioned by 
 Phyllis in the last chapter of Part Five. Moreover, 
 some androgynes are psychic hermaphrodites and 
 capable of sincerity in courting a girl, while at the 
 same time Nature insists on occasional female-imper- 
 sonation sprees. Z might have been a psychic 
 hermaphrodite.] 
 
 (2) That he had never shown any suicidal tenden- 
 cies. [Readers of my Autobiography of an Andro- 
 gyne know that I probably showed more suicidal ten- 
 dencies than almost any one else who has failed to carry 
 them out; yet I always hid them absolutely from my 
 family and every-day associates. Androgynes, because 
 they do not want their friends to become aware of the 
 cause of their melancholia (fearing it would alienate 
 them, as at present no one can forgive cross-sexism in 
 an intimate) habitually suffer in silence and seclusion 
 the most intense mental torture.] 
 
 (3) That no kind of woman's wear was ever 
 known to be in his possession. [For years together I 
 have myself kept woman's wear under lock and key 
 
240 Many Female-Impersonation Explosions. 
 
 and occasionly put it on, but none of my every-day 
 associates ever discovered these facts. Cultured 
 androgynes always conceal such practices because 
 their every-day bigoted circles would make them 
 pariahs.] 
 
 And as yet nobody has been able to find where Z 
 got the feminine apparel. [It was later discovered 
 he had bought it of a ladies' outfitter.] Nearly every 
 article found on him was soiled and showed unmistak- 
 able signs of wear. [He had probably worn the 
 articles on scores of female-impersonation sprees. 
 Cultured androgynes never let their families get an 
 inkling of these psychic explosions.] 
 
 Z was twenty-one. The boy received a common- 
 school education, but left high-school in the second 
 year to work in the large manufacturing establishment 
 of his father. He had a strong bent for mechanics. 
 He took care of the family's three automobiles, as well 
 as a motor-cycle. Three years ago his father gave 
 him a motor-yacht, which he himself took care of. 
 
 During the World War, Z enlisted as mechanician 
 in the navy, but was assigned to shore duty near New 
 York throughout the war. 1 [There exist all degrees 
 of psychic effemination in androgynes. I estimate my 
 own proportions as woman, 80 per cent; man, 20. 
 Evidently Z was around 60, woman and 40, man, 
 judging by his willingness to take a fire-arm into his 
 hands, a thing which I would never do, even as a child 
 shrinking from a cap-pistol. X and Y likewise were 
 less extreme effeminants than myself. They would 
 put up a resistance if attacked, whereas I depended for 
 escape merely on entreaty or flight (Nature gave me 
 
 1 See note beginning bottom page 254. 
 
Androgyne Expedients. 241 
 
 the legs of a gazelle) ; or if they failed me, I pretended 
 loss of consciousness after the first terrific blow. 
 Through this complete passivity, I came out far better 
 than if I had shown fight, and probably saved myself, 
 on several occasions, from being one hundred per cent 
 murdered.] 
 
 Z often practiced with a revolver at a target in 
 the basement of his home. [He was pay-master in 
 his father's factory and often had in his possession 
 large sums, and had to know how to defend himself 
 from robbers.] His rifle was found on his boat, 
 together with cartridges, on the day of his death. 
 Why, if he intended suicide, did he not use his revolver, 
 or else the rifle that was handy at the time on the boat ? 
 [This, to me, is conclusive evidence of murder or man- 
 slaughter.] 
 
 Z possessed the only key to the cabin of the boat. 
 The family say there were originally two keys, but 
 the duplicate was "lost" about a year ago. [Possibly 
 Z staged all his female-impersonation sprees on his 
 yacht and so gave the duplicate to an idol before whom 
 he regularly posed, just as I have given a trusted idol 
 a key to enter my own apartment whenever he felt 
 like it.] 
 
 In High Spirits 
 
 On the afternoon preceding the day of his death, 
 Z took his motor-cycle apart in order to renew some 
 mechanism. On his last evening alive, he was in high 
 spirits, setting every one of his circle laughing. So 
 far from being depressed, he seemed flushed with 
 happiness at the prospect of future success in business, 
 having only just received a promotion. [His unusual 
 
242 Androgynes Compelled to Fabricate. 
 
 happiness on the very eve of the murder might indicate 
 that he had just succeeded in coming to terms with a 
 new idol, who, however, the next afternoon, on dis- 
 covering how "deeply depraved" Z was, strangled him 
 with the rope. I myself have several times been 
 half-murdered under similar circumstances. I have 
 also been elevated into the third heaven of bliss on 
 receiving a favorable message from an idol.] 
 
 On the morning of the day of Z's death, he called 
 on a friend who was to give a party in a few days, 
 and assured the latter he would be present. He then 
 ate noon lunch with his family. It was his father's 
 birthday, and Z promised to take the family out for an 
 automobile ride in the late afternoon. Right after 
 lunch, Z remarked : "I'll first make a trip to the boat 
 to pump the water out. It hasn't been touched for a 
 week, and you know how the water accumulates under 
 the engine. I won't be gone long." [It was two 
 miles from Z's residence to the boat; twenty minutes, 
 by motor-cycle, to get on board. The reason given 
 impresses me as a mere pretext to hide his appoint- 
 ment on the launch and prospective female-imperson- 
 ation — because the pretext sounds just like me. I am 
 one who has been compelled to falsify much because if 
 my associates had been granted the truth, they would 
 have impiously crushed me. In my university course 
 in ethics, I was taught that it is proper to tell a lie if 
 the persons deceived have no right to the truth. Al- 
 ways those whom I deceived had no right, because the 
 truth would have rendered them insanely cruel.] 
 
 In a jovial mood [because about to meet his idol, 
 I suspect] Z departed on his motor-cycle at 1 :30. On 
 the way he stopped at a dealer's — full of laughter 
 
Probably Man-Slaughter. 243 
 
 here also — and filled his cycle tank with a gallon of 
 gasoline. [Two indications against suicide.] At the 
 wharf, he was seen to take oars out of his locker and 
 row to his power-boat anchored fifty yards out. He 
 was next seen, by two men on a yacht anchored fifty 
 feet from his own, to disappear down into his cabin. 
 [The last declaration by any one of having seen Z 
 before discovered dead in his cabin.] These two men 
 remained on the deck of their anchored launch all the 
 afternoon until 5 :30, and both are positive that Z did 
 not reappear on his deck. They are equally positive 
 that no one came from or went to Z's launch. 
 
 The owner of the power-boat continuously anch- 
 ored on the other side of Z's was aboard from 2 :30 
 until 4 :30, and is positive no one approached Z's boat 
 from that side. The owner of a third power-boat 
 continuously anchored thirty-five feet from Z's in an- 
 other direction also spent the afternoon on board, and 
 tells the same story. Two men [custodians and rent- 
 ers of boats] busy all the afternoon around the wharf 
 fifty yards away saw no one go to or come from Z's 
 launch. 
 
 [To me the most probable solution of Z's death 
 is that it was neither murder nor suicide, but 
 accidental man-slaughter. Perhaps Z had the habit, 
 to satisfy his mania for female-impersonation, of tak- 
 ing on his yacht as an audience young bachelors who 
 owned launches usually anchored near his own. Per- 
 haps a launch, on that Sunday afternoon ideal for 
 yachting, was kept at anchor near Z's because its own- 
 er had plotted to teach Z a lesson, with the "good" 
 intention of curing him of his habit of female-imper- 
 sonation, believing — as nearly every one 'does at 
 
244 Torturing an Androgyne. 
 
 present because prohibited by public opinion from 
 learning the truth — that it is a wilful bad habit. 
 When Z had rigged himself in feminine garb (because 
 the female side of his duality demanded it), one or 
 more of the young men from one of the anchored 
 yachts — according to my theory — had tied ropes 
 around him, even around his neck, the latter merely 
 in order to frighten him and prevent his calling for 
 help. The newspapers stated that only a "seaman" 
 could display such skill in tying ropes, and these 
 yachtsmen were amateur seamen. They then, late in 
 the afternoon, after they had had their "fun" with the 
 pitiable androgyne, went ashore, having no thought 
 that the rope around the throat would tighten suffi- 
 ciently to strangle Z. They designed merely to punish 
 him for his androgynism (1) through his being com- 
 pelled to lie helpless on the cabin floor for several 
 hours, with a rope tight around his neck to prevent 
 him calling for help, and, (2) more than that, through 
 humilating him before his family, who finally, anxious 
 over his not returning home, would visit the yacht and 
 discover him in his most ignominious garb and predica- 
 ment. 
 
 [But Z, in his writhings to free himself from his 
 bonds, unfortunately tightened the rope about his neck 
 and was fatally strangled, the young men having de- 
 parted and no one being at hand to succor him in his 
 death agony. Z was only one more of the many 
 martyrs to the public's prohibition of the showing up 
 of the myth that bisexuals are monsters of depravity, 
 deserving the crudest forms of torture and even 
 murder. Those guilty of Z's death — under the theory 
 now being propounded — were fundamentally irrespon- 
 
Church and Public Opinion Guilty. 245 
 
 sible. The guilt lies with the Church and public 
 opinion, both of which teach that no punishment is 
 too bad for an androgyne. 
 
 [A few days after Z's death, I wrote letters to Z's 
 father giving all my theories. I desired to do all I 
 could to avenge my brother in calamity by bringing 
 his assailants to justice. It would not be surprising 
 if Z's father was disinclined to press matters because 
 of shame over the son's being an androgyne combined 
 with the public's so terribly misjudging androgynism. 
 Z's near neighbor, a young college graduate whom I 
 "pumped," told me first that the fact at the bottom of 
 Z's death "was of such nature that it could not be 
 discussed"! I could get at the truth only by putting 
 repeated frank questions, since he labored under the 
 terrible delusion that sex is a subject beyond dis- 
 cussion. This college man expressed the opinion that 
 Z was wilfully depraved and "got all that was coming 
 to him." I interviewed several others who knew the 
 Z family merely by sight and reputation. They all 
 showed intense antipathy, being of the opinion 
 that a family's having an androgyne relative was 
 sufficient cause for its ostracism. 
 
 [A personal parallel : To only one member of my 
 own family — a brother — have I ever confessed my 
 addiction to female-impersonation sprees. I did it 
 twenty years ago, at the age of twenty-seven, because 
 I then had enemies at Ft. X (at the time my regular 
 stamping-ground) who hated androgynism so fiercely 
 as to be capable of murdering an individual in whom 
 the phenomenon cropped up. I therefore explained 
 matters to a brother: that if ever I was found mur- 
 dered, to look for my assassin among the common 
 
246 Androgynes' Relations Ashamed to Prosecute. 
 
 soldiers of Ft. X. He replied : "Ralph, if you are ever 
 murdered on one of your female-impersonation sprees, 
 the family would be too much ashamed ever to take 
 the first step to bring your murderer to justice!"] 
 
 At the supper hour, Z's mother telephoned to the 
 wharf and was informed her son had not returned 
 from his yacht. Fearing he had met with an accident, 
 she and her daughter went by automobile to the wharf, 
 arriving at 6 :30. It was then almost dark. A boat- 
 man rowed the mother, shivering nervously, to the 
 launch. As Mrs. Z descended the forward hatch, her 
 foot struck a human body lying at the foot of the 
 steps, face downward. She felt the hands, which 
 stuck out above the body, and found them cold. 
 
 "Linnie has fainted!" Mrs. Z exclaimed. She 
 hastily lighted a lantern, while the boatman remained 
 at the top of the short flight of stairs, apparently 
 paralyzed with fear. But having a light, Mrs. Z 
 discovered the inert body to be clothed in a long blue 
 dress, while the head was covered with a black oilcloth 
 hag. [Such covering of the head indicates non- 
 suicide. The man-killer covered Z's head because, 
 before abandoning him with the rope around his neck, 
 he (or they) tormented and tortured Z. I have myself 
 had a handkerchief thrust into my mouth to prevent 
 an outcry and been thereupon tortured merely because 
 of insane loathing of androgynism.] 
 
 Mrs. Z now exclaimed: "Why, it's a woman! 
 She's been strangled, and Linnie's not here !" 
 
 Overcome with terror, she left the boat without 
 further examination. Mr. Z, when his wife greeted 
 him with the f ranctic cry : "A woman has been strang- 
 led on our yacht!" immediately visited it. He re- 
 
Father's Assertions Discarded. 247 
 
 moved the hood from the form on the cabin floor, and 
 in amazement recognized the face of his son. Around 
 the neck was a tightened noose of Manila rope tied 
 with a hangman's knot. Mr. Z is positive the knot 
 was at the back of the neck. [This position is an in- 
 dication of non-suicide. A suicide would naturally 
 have placed the knot in front.] Unable to loosen the 
 knot, Mr. Z cut the rope. He noticed that both his 
 son's hands were behind the back, apparently tied with 
 a sash cord, although he did not think to make sure 
 both were tied. For, finding the body cold, he was 
 convulsed with grief and immediately left without 
 making further examination. 
 
 The next arrivals were policemen. 
 
 The Homicide bureau contends that although 
 there was a slip-knot around the left hand, the right 
 was free and Z used one or both hands to draw the 
 hangman's noose about his neck. This theory pre- 
 supposes that the knot was at the throat, and discards 
 the father's assertion that it was at the back of the 
 neck. 
 
 Z's ankles were tied together with rope, as were 
 his knees and arms. [A queer way to commit suicide 
 for the victim to take the greatest pains to make 
 people think he had been murdered ! And when there 
 were a rifle and cartridges on board the launch ! And 
 only an hour or two before in a jovial mood, and laying 
 in a supply of gasoline !] A medical examiner calcu- 
 lated that death had occurred between four and five 
 P. M. The two men on the deck of the power-boat on 
 one side of Z's launch had gone ashore at 5.30, and the 
 single man on the power-boat on the other side, at 4.30. 
 None had heard any cry or other sound from the Z 
 
248 Z's Woman's Apparel. 
 
 launch [35 to 50 feet distant and on an ultra-still 
 Sunday afternoon when sounds carry unusually well.] 
 When these witnesses went ashore, Z's rowboat was 
 fastened to his launch — in the same position as when 
 his mother arrived. 
 
 The woman's apparel in which Z was found clad 
 consisted of a chemise; corset; corset-cover with rose- 
 colored baby ribbon running through the lace; a pair 
 of pink bloomers with ruffles at the knees ; high black 
 stockings fastened by garters to the corset; a pair of 
 high laced woman's shoes, with French high heels; 
 and finally, the blue-checked gingham dress. All the 
 apparel fitted Z well. 
 
 The clothing in which Z had left home was found 
 on a bunk in the cabin — excepting an overshirt, which 
 was pinned over the porthole nearest the launch fifty 
 feet distant on whose deck two men spent the 
 afternoon. Aside from this circumstance, the police 
 discovered no sign of disorder in any part of the 
 launch. They discovered no other articles or circum- 
 stances having a bearing on the case. [Androgynes 
 are in general non-resistant. Z probably did not 
 struggle against his tormentor, as I myself have always 
 been absolutely passive on such occasions. Any way 
 he probably did not even imagine that he was under 
 any risk of death. He probably expected to return 
 home within an hour — as he had previously done after 
 dozens of female-impersonation explosions.} 
 
 But reporters, who later examined the boat, found 
 a thick hickory club in a drawer. [My theory is that 
 Z was accustomed to entertain on the boat, in the 
 absence of any of his family, adolescents before whom 
 he had a craze to impersonate a mademoiselle — the 
 
Assassins of High Morality. 249 
 
 common practice of the more extreme type of an- 
 drogyne. He probably entertained only one at a time. 
 Fearing he might be attacked by one of these perhaps 
 doubtful characters, he kept the club for self-defence, 
 as well as the rifle already mentioned. The fact that 
 he did not attempt to avail himself of these weapons 
 on this occasion indicates that his assailants were 
 young men whose high morality was known to Z.] 
 In a chest in an out-of-the-way place, the reporters 
 found a bundle of wrapping paper stained and torn. 
 Inside was a metal shoe-horn. [My theory is that Z 
 stored his feminine wardrobe in this paper and chest. 
 The paper was probably that in which the feminine 
 outfit had originally been brought to the launch and 
 was preserved for possible use in carrying it away.] 
 
 The Z family kept a supply of beer on the yacht, 
 but affirmed : "Linnie hated beer and never learned to 
 drink it." [Very androgynesque. Girl-boys are in- 
 clined to be puritans in every respect except female- 
 impersonation and coquetry.] 
 
 The only feminine article that Z wore which the 
 family recognized was a multi-colored silk ribbon fast- 
 ened around his waist and belonging to a sister. 
 
 The autopsy showed that death had resulted solely 
 from strangulation. All the ropes used in binding Z 
 belonged to his yacht. [The reason Z was done to 
 death with ropes is that there naturally were many on 
 board a yacht and it was a noiseless death. There was 
 a loaded rifle on the yacht. That a noiseless method 
 was chosen indicates murder rather than suicide. The 
 use of ropes also indicates a yachtsman as author of 
 the crime — because accustomed to handling ropes. He 
 lives and breathes ropes.] 
 
250 Z of Androgyne Physique. 
 
 Z was five feet four in height and weighed 145 
 pounds. [Short and plump build characteristic of 
 androgjmes.] The city medical examiner noted that 
 the lower ribs were "retracted, possibly due to the use 
 of corsets." He also noted that "the beard and 
 moustache are scanty." [Meaning if not shaven close. 
 Such scantiness is common in androgynes.] 
 
 If the murder theory is true, the assassin must 
 have planned to murder with great care. [It was all 
 done on the spur of the moment, and the death 
 probably an accident.] He must have had an accom- 
 plice who brought him to the boat before the murder, 
 and took him away afterward, and he must have 
 known in some mysterious way that Z was going to 
 visit the boat that Sunday afternoon. [If Z was 
 murdered, he had had an appointment on the yacht 
 with his assassin. The latter must have arrived before 
 the yachtsmen who spent the afternoon on the 
 closely encircling decks, and watched that they go 
 ashore before himself. At dusk he could have 
 swum away without being seen. At that hour on a 
 Sunday, there were many desolate points on the nearby 
 shore at which he could have unobservedly emerged. 
 But the most daring criminal would hardly have com- 
 mitted a murder with several men only a few feet 
 away on the decks of the encircling yachts. A single 
 shriek from the victim would have immediately 
 brought several men on board.] 
 
 The care with which the clothing was put on cer- 
 tainly seems to indicate that Z himself put it on, every 
 article being properly adjusted. 
 
 [The authorities, because ignorant of androgyne 
 psychology and habits and despising a bisexual (my- 
 
Author's Oivn Foretaste of Z's Fate. 251 
 
 self) too much to listen to his-her theories, were on a 
 false scent. At the date this volume goes to press 
 (December, 1921) , the Z mystery — as well as the X, Y, 
 and Q — has not been cleared up by the authorities, 
 although none of the four is much of a problem to 
 myself, knowing how the world treats androgynes. 
 
 [It is a strange coincidence that about a score of 
 years before Z was strangled, within two miles of his 
 yacht's point of anchorage, in a large patch of woods 
 at night, I was, as an aftermath of a female-imperson- 
 ation, being roughly teased by six "young fellows." 
 To cap the climax, they led me toward a tree and said 
 they were "going to get a rope and hang" me. Horri- 
 fied, I feigned an epileptic fit to save myself. See my 
 Autobiography of an Androgyne, page 208. 
 
 [While I have never believed Z a suicide, it is a 
 possibility. A new idol with whom he had had an 
 appointment on the yacht that afternoon might have 
 shown utter disgust at Z's revelations — as I have 
 myself witnessed in a confidant — and pitilessly aban- 
 doned him. This misguided attitude might have 
 brought on Z a sympathetic disgust with himself as 
 female-impersonator and cross-dresser. According to 
 this theory, Z wished to punish and heap indignities on 
 his own body — just as I have myself, in my verdant 
 middle teens, taken a whip and chastised my own 
 body because lustful, homosexual thoughts had invaded 
 my mind, while crying out : " 'O wretched man that I 
 am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death !' " 
 Perhaps Z wished to punish his own body by depriving 
 it of breath while in female garb and so publish to the 
 world the despicableness of his own physical person- 
 ality. In no other way could Z's spiritually minded 
 
252 Suicide Theory. 
 
 psyche better revenge itself on his carnal body than 
 to have the latter's grossness proclaimed on the 
 housetops. 
 
 [In case Z was a suicide, the idol who had only a 
 few minutes before pitilessly scorned his advances was 
 very likely an adolescent spending that afternoon on 
 one of the three nearest yachts. As I have said, the 
 case came to a curious abrupt ending in the papers, as 
 if the entire solution had become known to those 
 immediately interested, but the public was not let into 
 the secret in order to shield unblameworthy parties. 
 
 [If Z was a suicide, I have myself passed through 
 a very similar experience. (See my Autobiography 
 of an Androgyne, page 235.) Because heartlessly 
 jilted by a new idol and afraid I would as "a monster 
 of depravity," be cast out of the caravan with which I 
 was travelling in an uninhabited region of the Rockies, 
 I walked away in the forest alone at dusk a mile from 
 camp having in mind suicide by being torn to pieces 
 by bears, with which the forest abounded, and several 
 of which I saw that night roaming within a hundred 
 feet. Like Z, I had not left behind a single oral or 
 written word as to suicide. I was acting on the spur 
 of the moment. For several hours I experienced such 
 depths of sorrow as not one human out of ten thousand 
 ever tastes. Continuously for an hour, out of hearing 
 of the camp, I wailed at the top of my voice over my 
 terrible lot in life — that of a despised, hated, and out- 
 lawed "degenerate" (as the hypocritical nine-tenths of 
 civilized humanity delight to call" me) — and over the 
 possibly impending unfathomable disgrace among a 
 party of rough men with whom I must travel until we 
 got back to a railroad. I experienced a violent desire 
 
Author's Attempt at Suicide. 253 
 
 to be devoured by bears. But the All-Seeing overruled 
 that they did not attack me.] 1 
 
 1 I had fully described this adventure in my AUTOBIO- 
 GRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, but the details were cut out 
 by its editor. I append them here because tending to show that 
 the sparser the population of a district, the greater the renug- 
 nance of civilized young roues to androgynism and the rarer 
 is the latter phenomenon per thousand males. In other words: 
 My conclusion from extensive travel and intimate mingling, 
 as an ultra-androgyne, with native adolescent roues in every 
 corner of the United States and Europe is that among civilized 
 nations, the frequency of male bisexuals per thousand inhabi- 
 tants and their tolerance by the full-fledged are in general in 
 direct proportion to the density of population. 
 
 I, a woman-soul, but reputedly a young man, was delegated 
 to write up an unusual affair transpiring in a Rocky Mountain 
 wilderness. I was in a caravan with fifty men of the roughest 
 type, cowboys, miners, etc. All were bachelors or grass-widow- 
 ers. Day in and day out, they hardly talked of anything but 
 prostitutes, some of whom enlivened every mining or lumbering 
 camp of any permanence, although their rates were seven times 
 city prices and they laid away fortunes. Some of the decidedly 
 lucky prospectors, as well as occasional city-ites on hunting 
 trips, were always accompanied by their mistresses — the city- 
 ites doubtless glad to get away from "friend wife" for a few 
 weeks. 
 
 I found the adolescent cowboys and miners of the Rockies 
 the most prejudiced against effeminate males of any of the 
 hundreds of circles of adolescent roues with which I have 
 mingled as a girlboy. The first hour, when I had not compro- 
 mised myself in any way, they began to heap up insults, par- 
 ticularly taking pains to refer to me within my hearing by 
 the obscene term most often used by roughs for a girl-boy. 
 (My own age was then thirty-three, but my friends told me I 
 looked to be only twenty-five. I still possessed the "small-boy" 
 aspect common among ultra-androgynes.) I feared my forced 
 sojourn with those who so despised effeminacy would be intol- 
 erable. 
 
 But my plan to win their respect succeeded. I exhibited my 
 credentials as representative of a journal of national reputation. 
 They never again insulted me and I even became popular. 
 The more sensual began to resort to terms of endearment and 
 embraces. But, while fascinated by these attentions, I distrust- 
 ed them to the extent of not disclosing my secret desires. I 
 knew that prudes occasionally murder bisexuals in cities. In 
 the wilds of the Rockies these same prudes (only so far as 
 concerns homosexuality) could so easily push me over a 
 
254 Murdering Androgynes Not Now Necessary. 
 
 precipice after tempting me to a stroll, and no one ever learn 
 my fate. The tradition is wide spread that bisexuals must be 
 murdered. Perhaps the practice of murdering is akin to that 
 prevalent among some savage tribes of children killing their 
 parents as soon as the latter become too feeble to hunt and work. 
 It was racial economy to put out of the way those who could not 
 contribute their share to the food supply, as well as those 
 impotent to procreate children. But as civilized man no 
 longer finds it necessary to the continued life of the nation to 
 knock in the head all citizens as they reach the age of rixty, 
 equally there is now no call for murdering (or even chastising) 
 individuals incapable of generation. 
 
 But sleeping in the same tent and continuously having to 
 listen to confessions of their amorous adventures, I became 
 wrought up as rarely in my life. Therefore after a week of 
 continuous Platonic association with the cowboy who seemed 
 naturally the most high-minded and trustworthy, I invited him 
 for an evening's stroll in the forest primaeval. He had been 
 brought up on a Wyoming ranch, never been inside of a church, 
 never heard a word read out of the Bible, and could not read 
 nor write. He asserted he had once been a rough rider in 
 Buffalo Bill's show, and my test of his descriptions of the sur- 
 roundings of Madison Square Garden in New York evidenced 
 his truthfulness. I worshipped the very soil on which this 
 "Nature's nobleman" trod. For he was, in addition, the hand- 
 somest adolescent in the caravan. On our stroll I confessed my- 
 self an "hermaphrodite," using that inaccurate term because 
 it is known to every rough (though by them always pronounced 
 incorrectly). He would not have understood "androgyne." 
 Since he was only a servant in the caravan, I offered a large 
 bill. But much to my surprise and almost to my death, he 
 abruptly jilted me with an unparalleled display of horror. But 
 he promised to keep the incident locked in a chamber of his 
 brain, and events proved him true blue. My desolate stroll 
 in the bear-infested wilderness followed immediately. 
 
 If these cowboys and miners, as well as all other men, 
 instead of having been, from boyhood, fed on the most crime- 
 provoking of falsehoods, namely, that homosexuals (so called, 
 though psychicly and often in part physically belonging to the 
 opposite sex) are monsters of depravity for whom no punish- 
 ment is too severe, had been taught that these sexual cripples 
 merit only compassion, I would myself have been spared those 
 hours of excruciating anguish in the forest, and hundreds of 
 youthful androgynes would not have committed suicide. 
 
 Note to page 240. — This comment so developed that I was 
 compelled to make it a footnote. The assignment to shore 
 duty might indicate that Z's immediate superiors might have 
 noticed that he was of soft disposition, an earmark of 
 
Visit to Fort "Y" in 1921. 255 
 
 androgynism. An androgyne acquaintance, though perfectly 
 sound physically, was rejected in the World War draft merely 
 on account of his softspokenness and generally "soft" manner- 
 isms. Another young androgyne acquaintance enlisted in the 
 Hospital Corps during the war so as to be able to pass all his 
 time among idols. Moreover, androgynes long to serve as 
 nurses to wounded virile young men, as did Walt Whitman dur- 
 ing the American War of the Rebellion. Androgynes make the 
 best nurses of youthful warriors because they slavishly adore 
 them. From an eyewitness I heard of a third androgyne who 
 was drafted in the World War and "bobtailed" out of the army 
 because discovered to be addicted to fellatio. From another 
 eyewitness I heard of a fourth androgyne who was similarly 
 "bobtailed", and as a result of the indignities heaped upon him 
 at the time, immediately committed suicide. Of course those 
 who heaped up the indignities thought the sexual cripple 
 wilfully depraved. From still another eyewitness I heard of 
 another drafted androgyne who, on the eve of his first battle 
 in France, ate the heads off matches so as to assure getting back 
 into the hospital while his virile "buddies" were valiantly 
 "going over the top." Virility confers bravery. 
 
 At the date of writing, I still "pal" only with regular 
 soldiers, but am instinctively such an industrious worker that 
 I go into any kind of fellowship only about once a fortnight. 
 I still look upon youthful regular soldiers as magic demigods 
 to whom I wish to enslave myself. Two days before the present 
 writing, I happened to take a walk to Fort Y, which plaved a 
 large part in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, 
 and which, from 1902 to 1905, I visited, in the role of female- 
 impersonator, one evening out of fourteen, and where I was 
 acquainted with practically every one of the four hundred men 
 not above the grade of sergeant. That of two days ago was 
 only my second trip there in the past sixteen years. Because 
 it is inconveniently located for a visit. After sixteen years, I 
 happened to be recognized by one soldier who had stuck to that 
 post and risen to the rank of sergeant. He told me there were 
 still only about four at the fort who served there when I had 
 the honor to be "the daughter of the regiment." He expressed 
 his amazement at my being so well preserved, saying I look 
 twenty years younger than I am. He told me that only four 
 or five fairies had run after the men of that fort in the past six- 
 teen years. That small number is due to the remoteness of Fort 
 Y from the city. At two other forts formerly frequented by me 
 as a female-impersonator which are right in the city, androgyne 
 cultivators of the common soldiers are numerous. A man 
 serving at one of these forts told me that common soldiers 
 often speak with one another about their "fairies." Whenever 
 any one of the former appears with a new watch, ring, etc., a 
 common query of his "buddies" is: "Did your fairie give it to 
 
256 Author's Conversations with Opposites. 
 
 you?" Seven out of ten common soldiers appear exceedingly 
 glad to have a prosperous young androgyne in their midst, 
 particularly because he showers them with gifts and entertain- 
 ment. Only one out of ten is such a prude as to walk away 
 from the circle of which I have hundreds of times had the 
 privilege of being the star. Some of these prudes would 
 murder an androgyne but for fear of being punished. 
 
 Because of this remoteness of Fort Y, however, I had found 
 there, during the hey-day of my career as female-impersonator, 
 a specially hearty welcome and specially rich pickings. 
 
 (See "Emotion" in Part VIII.) 
 
 The sergeant I met two days ago — as common soldiers in 
 general — was very much interested to hear the experiences of 
 an androgyne as I narrated my life-story for the sixteen years 
 since I talked with him. I habitually tell soldier associates the 
 complete story of my life, and all who stay in the circle to 
 listen appear very glad for the chat. Of course I never use 
 any indecent language, although dealing frankly with sex 
 questions. I am a lecturer on sexology to them. Moreover, 
 within three minutes after becoming acquainted with a com- 
 mon soldier, I sometimes ask him, if he is beyond twenty- 
 five, if he is married. For I do not care to chat with married 
 men. I also commonly ask why he never married. I ask him 
 to enlighten me as to his feelings toward the gentle sex, and as 
 to what transpires when he and a girl are out for an evening's 
 stroll on a rural road. They are very frank in telling me their 
 outlook on life. If there is no opportunity for assault and 
 robbery (A large proportion of the uncultured thinking the 
 first thing of robbing a stranger androgyne, if not of "beating 
 him up") I have, to strange young soldiers, confessed myself an 
 androgyne within three minutes after we exchanged our first 
 words, because their learning that fact proves, in general, the 
 strongest kind of a drawing card. 
 
 The sergeant of two days ago wanted to make a date with 
 me. I absolutely turned my back on such a proposition, chiefly 
 on account of the dread of the physical and mental debility 
 always supervening the following day. He urged me to resume 
 my visits to Fort Y, to flaunt myself before all the soldiers as 
 female-impersonator, as sixteen years before. I replied that I 
 was now too old and too feeble. While sixteen years before I 
 never left the vicinity of the post without dalliance with 
 intimates, two days ago I did not entertain the least idea of, and 
 hardly any wish for, such relations. Age has sobered me. 
 "Intimates" I just wrote — some of whom, however, I had never 
 laid eyes on until three minutes before. Providence gave me 
 this wealth of one kind to counterbalance the almost unparallel- 
 ed anguish I have been called upon to suffer because of my fate 
 of being a sorely persecuted androgyne. 
 
duihor's Third "Adopted Son." 257 
 
 Lest I should be misjudged (the reader will any way judge 
 me the warmest body that ever breathed, as intimates have 
 told me) I further confess that during the year ending March, 
 1921, I visited at another fort about once a fortnight a 20-year- 
 old private whom I planned to adopt (not legally) as son to 
 live with me the rest of my life. I previously looked over, at 
 ball games at the post, the entire common-soldier personnel 
 of several hundred in order to pick out one of the three or 
 four handsomest. Even at my first visit, one or two of the 
 privates with whom I exchanged words evidently took me for 
 an androgyne looking for a sweetheart, and did their best to 
 be "the lucky dog." But I passed the poor fellows by until I 
 could get intimately acquainted with one of the three or four 
 pre-eminent Adonises. I later ascertained that the one selected 
 — greatly to his joy and to the envy of numerous "buddies" — 
 excelled in disposition and character as much as in good looks. 
 I also learned he had been brought up in the back woods and 
 had never attended school a single day, although he had learned 
 to read and write a little after entering the army. After I had 
 known him intimately for nine months, his enlistment expired. 
 Only now I disclosed my true name and station and took him 
 to live in my own home, where I had been all by myself, doing 
 my own housework like a woman. Although I had loaded him 
 with gifts, this my "third adopted son" took French leave 
 after only three days' residence with me. His "buddies" told 
 me he had gone away to marry the girl with whom I had known 
 he had been corresponding. 
 
 Having lost him, I immediately started in to cultivate at 
 the same barracks its pre-eminent Adonis, and almost its pre- 
 eminent Hercules, with a view to his non-legal adoption to live 
 with me as son the rest of my life after a nine-months 
 apprenticeship during which he would not know my real name, 
 station in life, or place of residence. It is easy to conceal 
 these things from common soldiers. They are not inquisitive. 
 They believe my misrepresentations of myself — necessary be- 
 cause androgynes are the favorite victims of blackmailers/ 
 But after a month, this latest favorite committed theft and I 
 never saw him again. His "buddies" told me that he had 
 stolen two blankets, "government property," and was therefore 
 sentenced to two years in military prison. If I am correctly 
 informed, court martials often impose on an enlisted man caught 
 in a misdemeanor a prison sentence several times as lengthy as 
 would a civil court. I take this opportunity to enter a plea for 
 better treatment of common soldiers, who have been my "pals" 
 for a quarter of a century — particularly for punishments by 
 court martial no more severe than by civil courts. Sometimes I 
 have thought that when an uneducated young man enlists to 
 defend his country as a common soldier, he thereby forfeits all 
 rights of citizenship and all privileges guaranteed by the 
 
258 An Adonis or a Hercules? 
 
 American constitution. The cow-boys of the Rockies have 
 mingled with common soldiers because of the numerous forts 
 scattered throughout the "Indian country." I asked one with 
 whom I was well acquainted why he did not serve a few years 
 in the army. His words were: "Do you think I want to be a 
 slave?" But the lot of the common soldier has steadily im- 
 proved during my association with him, excepting during our 
 war with Germany. In 1921, he is better treated by his officers 
 than ever before. 
 
 The context of this footnote moves me to reflect: Do I 
 prefer an Adonis or a Hercules ? I incline to the latter slightly. 
 My first "adopted son" (for nine years, as described in my 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE) was an almost un- 
 matched Hercules and at the same time an almost unmatched 
 Adonis. He was one young man out of ten thousand. My 
 second "adopted son" (for only a half-year, as described in 
 same work) was neither a Hercules nor an Adonis. Not more 
 than one out of twenty adolescents can qualify under either of 
 these physically superior types, and I must confess that these 
 types are very much lacking in mental acumen. Bright 
 intellects nearly always go hand in hand with poor physical 
 development. My second "adopted son" (while only tolerably 
 good-looking) commanded my adoration because of his beautiful 
 disposition and extreme passion for myself. My third pros- 
 pective "adopted son" was a pre-eminent Adonis, and a fair 
 Hercules. 
 
 There exist other attractive qualities in males that knit 
 females to them. The chief is intellectual brilliance. That to 
 me has always been, sexually considered, decidedly detractive — 
 because I am myself of the intellectual type. As a rule, only 
 opposites attract. 
 
Newspaper Accounts of Murders. 259 
 
 III. College Student's Death is Unexplained. 
 
 (The following are excerpts from a New York 
 paper. Every few months the press brings to light a 
 similar death of an androgyne. All because the world 
 misunderstands and grossly misjudges them, as well as 
 because public opinion has always deprived them of 
 the means of coming to an understanding of them- 
 selves. Bracketed words and italics are those of the 
 author of The Female-Impersonators.) 
 
 STUDENT'S DEATH MYSTERY BAFFLING — NO KNOWN 
 BASIS IN Q'S LIFE TO SUGGEST MURDER OR SUICIDE 
 THEORY 
 
 Overdone detective fiction seldom presents so 
 many significant but mostly inexplicable circumstances 
 surrounding the victim of death by violence as those 
 developed concerning [ Jimmie Q] , twenty, quiet, studi- 
 ous, religious [earmarks of androgynism] , a [North 
 Atlantic] college junior, popular, not morbid, a clean- 
 cut American youth, whose body was taken from the 
 river last Thursday night 
 
 Q loved to roam the slums of large cities. [An 
 earmark of cultured androgynism. They thus roam 
 because realizing that in their Overworld, they are 
 prohibited outlet for the feminine side of their duality. 
 They roam with day dreams of how they would like 
 to impersonate a female in the Underworld, where 
 alone female-impersonators are welcome; and finally, 
 in many cases, they are carried away by their mania 
 for an actual female-impersonation spree.] .... His 
 
260 Female-Impersonation Obsession. 
 
 college room-mate commented on the large number of 
 neckties, all Q had, which the latter was taking along. 
 [As he said, for a few days' visit to his father, which 
 visit did not take place. My theory is that he went to 
 the great city, in whose harbor his dead body was 
 found, to spend an evening with chance-met gangsters 
 in the slums, as I have myself done, and he took the 
 many neckties as presents for them, just as I myself 
 have carried neckties with which to shower them and 
 thus win their goodwill. The androgyne, of course, 
 wishes the gangsters as an audience for his loved im- 
 personations. Androgynes always wish an audience 
 of tremendously virile "young fellows."] 
 
 Q did not drink and never took special interest in 
 any woman. But he did like to rove about in the dis- 
 tricts of big cities in which the poorest classes live 
 
 and work Whenever he was in New York, he spent 
 
 most of his time in such districts 
 
 At the Morgue, Mr. Q identified the effects of his 
 son. When the body was exposed for his inspection — 
 it appeared to have been in the water about ten days — 
 the father bowed his head and tearfuly exclaimed: 
 "Poor Jimmie ! How you must have suffered !".... 
 
 The fisherman who had pulled the body ashore 
 
 had used a grappling hook To it they attributed 
 
 the incision which the [City's] Medical Examiner had 
 reported to have been made by some weapon. The 
 Medical Examiner denounced this report and suggest- 
 ed that the police were forwarding a suicide theory to 
 escape responsibility for solution of a crime. He de- 
 clared there was evidence of hemorrhage in this wound 
 not producible by such an injury inflicted long after 
 death. He further recalled that the left arm of Q was 
 
Methods of Torture. 261 
 
 dislocated at the elbow, with the arm muscles twisted 
 — positive indications of external violence. [I myself 
 have been tortured by a ruffian's seizing me by the 
 wrist and twisting around my arm so that I had to 
 shriek in agony.] 
 
 The Medical Examiner declared the absence of 
 water in the lungs developed by the autopsy showed 
 beyond question that Q was dead when his body entered 
 the water He had seventy-seven cents in his pock- 
 ets when his body was found. [Evidence of robbery, 
 considering that he was a well-to-do youth on a visit 
 to a great city distant from his college. My theory is, 
 on the basis of intimate knowledge of the practices of 
 androgynes, that he scraped acquaintance with one or 
 more gangsters, while adopting a girl's role. Many 
 gangsters cordially hate bisexuals. Because of this 
 hatred, as well as to escape prosecution after robbing 
 Q, the gangsters murdered him and threw his dead 
 body into the river — probably in the vicinity. Again 
 the fundamental cause of the death of another andro- 
 gyne is the terribly false teaching of the Church and 
 public opinion as to the nature of bisexuality.] 
 
ffltlntnl Writers an ^tibtatggm&m 
 
 ************ 
 
 I. What a New York Official Physician Has to Say 
 about Fairies. 
 
 In Medical Life of December, 1920, I had an 
 article: The Biological Sport of Fairieism. Readers 
 completely out of touch with Underworld life evidently 
 thought I was telling a fairy tale. Apparently the 
 editor of the Medical Review of Reviews appealed 
 for corroboration to a physician likely to be one of the 
 best authorities in the United States on my subject, 
 Perry M. Lichtenstein, M.D., Ll.B., Physician to City 
 Prison, "Tombs" (New York's principal jail), House 
 of Detention, etc., all of New York City. Apparently 
 there resulted the valuable and interesting article, The 
 "Fairy" and the Lady Lover, in Medical Review of 
 Reviews of August, 1921. Its writer has enjoyed al- 
 most unparalleled opportunities for examination of the 
 very fairies whose existence had been called in ques- 
 tion. I quote a small fraction, but the whole paper 
 should be read by every devotee of Aesculapius. 
 Knowledge of its contents is very necessary for 
 every practitioner. I use my spelling of "fairie." My 
 own comments are in brackets. The Review for 
 November, 1921, contained quite a lengthy reply of 
 mine. Dr. Lichtenstein begins his paper: 
 
 "Does the 'fairie' or 'fag' really exist? This ques- 
 tion has been asked time and again. There is no doubt 
 
 [262] 
 
Does the Fairie Really Exist? 263 
 
 but that this type of degenerate is a reality. [Un- 
 prejudiced science has not yet decided the matter of 
 the degeneracy of the androgyne in general, as I have 
 already shown in detail. There exists as much evi- 
 dence that the bisexual is a superman or genius as that 
 he or she is a degenerate. The truth of the matter 
 probably is that degenerates are no commoner per 
 thousand among bisexuals than among the sexually 
 full-fledged, but that geniuses occur far oftener.] He 
 is a freak of nature who in every way attempts to 
 imitate a woman. In my official capacity I have come 
 in contact with several hundred of such individuals, 
 and have in every instance felt sorry for the unfor- 
 tunate being. [Such sympathy indicates that fairies 
 are not wilfully of that genre, and should not suffer 
 term after term in prison, as now, for acts that do no- 
 body harm beyond offending the aesthetic sense of the 
 unsophisticated. Of course, in the matter of accosting 
 on the street, etc., they should be treated the same as 
 full-fledged females. But their punishment should not 
 be augmented because they are "homosexuals" — a 
 word that is a misnomer.] 
 
 "In practically every case I have found the man to 
 be a young person of age ranging between sixteen and 
 thirty. ["man"! — Only a pseudo-man. Really a 
 woman whom Nature has disguised as a man; a 
 woman with male genitals.] .... They are by no means 
 mental defectives. Most of them have had a good edu- 
 cation and come from respectable families. .. .Since 
 early childhood they have been seclusive and kept close 
 to their mother. They are emotional and affective. 
 . . . .They. . . .imitate the female as closely as possible. 
 They take feminine names, use perfume and dainty 
 
264 Artificial Breasts. 
 
 stationery which frequently is scented, and in many 
 instances they wear women's apparel. 
 
 "Recently one of these individuals was arrested, 
 charged with soliciting. When he ["he-she" would be 
 the accurate pronoun] arrived in the city prison, he 
 was searched, and on him were found .... artificial 
 busts, a wig, and a box containing powder and rouge. 
 This young man ["androgyne" would be the proper 
 term] was twenty years of age. He was beardless 
 [evidently natural], had an effeminate voice, and a 
 distinctly feminine walk. He lisped and in speech 
 
 closely approached a bashful female He. . . .had 
 
 graduated .... from high-school He ran away 
 
 from home and met some boys ["girlboys" would be 
 the proper term] whom he considered good company. 
 These young men ["androgynes" would be the proper 
 
 term] were of the same type as he In this way 
 
 [after a fashion, taking the place of the female of the 
 species] , [he] made enough money to live. 
 
 "These individuals .... of ten occupy handsomely 
 furnished apartments which are paid for by men who 
 patronize them. As a rule several 'fags' occupy an 
 apartment. On one occasion ten such individuals were 
 arrested in a raid by the police I had an oppor- 
 tunity to observe them closely. In every respect they 
 resembled the female. The names they used in calling 
 
 one another were feminine They had a typical 
 
 feminine walk [Because androgyne legs are some- 
 times those of a woman.] 
 
 "I can distinctly recall two cases which occurred 
 quite recently The first .... was arrested for so- 
 liciting and was sent to the female prison. This per- 
 son had wonderful hair which reached to the waist, 
 
Legal Persecution of Androgynes. 265 
 
 and it was not false. His face was as smooth as a 
 woman's [naturally beardless evidently] , his voice was 
 distinctly feminine, and his hands and feet were small. 
 He wore high-heeled shoes. In examining this person 
 the matron insisted that he strip. The prisoner re- 
 fused, and thereupon I was notified to make an ex- 
 amination When questioned, he stated that he pre- 
 ferred to dress as a female because he found that he 
 was effeminately inclined He was sent to the work- 
 house, and after serving his time was released. Sev- 
 eral months later I learned that he had again been ar- 
 rested for a similar offence. This time he wore a wig 
 in addition to the feminine garb. [Because during his 
 prior imprisonment, he had, under pressure, consented 
 to have his hair cut short, like a man, and promised to 
 live henceforth as a man — a promise hard to keep since 
 "he" was psychicly, and in part physically, a female.] 
 
 "The next case .... was arrested .... When taken 
 to the female prison, he refused to allow the matron to 
 
 search him I was called in. I found that the 
 
 prisoner wore a wig and artificial breasts. Every bit 
 of his attire was feminine The voice and manner- 
 isms were distinctly effeminate 
 
 "Many of the so-called 'social elite' are to be in- 
 cluded among these people " ["Many" only in the 
 
 aggregate. Proportionately, only about one out of 
 one-hundred-and fifty men. But the ratio is probably 
 higher among the cultured than among manual labor- 
 ers. They are not at all blameworthy, because they 
 were born with the strongest kind of instincts in that 
 direction, and do not thereby harm in the least any in- 
 dividual or society as a whole. They carefully keep 
 their idiosyncracy under cover.] 
 
266 Medical Writers on Androgynism. 
 
 II. What One of America's Foremost Medical 
 Writers Has to Say about Fairies. 
 
 Dr. Robert W. Shuf eldt, author of Studies in the 
 Human Form, has included at least one fairie among 
 the many human beings the results of his physical ex- 
 amination of whom he has published. The following 
 are excerpts from his valuable and interesting article, 
 Biography of a Passive Pederast, in the October, 
 1917, issue of the American Journal of Urology and 
 Sexology. I use my own spelling of "fairie." My 
 comments are in brackets. Those interested should 
 read the entire original article. Particularly two pho- 
 tographs of the subject are given, one nude and the 
 other in full feminine garb. 
 
 "J. W is a fairie from the slums of Brooklyn, 
 
 N. Y twenty-three years of age. When fourteen 
 
 . . . .the lobes of his ears had been pierced. . . .for ear- 
 rings, and these ornaments he commonly wears when 
 
 dressed in female attire He invited my attention 
 
 to the fine development of his breasts, whereas there 
 
 was not the slightest evidence of gynecomasty The 
 
 impression was left upon my mind that he was mor- 
 phologically male in all particulars I became 
 
 thoroughly convinced that the man was laboring under 
 
 ... .a most extraordinary delusion He claimed to 
 
 have his menses regularly every month. . . . [Evidently 
 bleeding piles.] 
 
 "In July he admitted that he had never been preg- 
 nant; while in November, when he brought with him 
 one of his numerous 'husbands' or lovers, he claimed 
 
Yearning for Feminine Attire. 267 
 
 that he had been pregnant a few years previously and 
 been operated on in a hospital and the conception re- 
 moved 'through his side.' .... I am convinced that this 
 mendacity is due to his delusions. 
 
 " . . . . While he could sing soprano well, he could 
 not whistle .... and he threw a stone like a girl. [Com- 
 mon earmarks of androgynism.] .... He did not, as he 
 moved about .... give one the impression that there 
 was anything in his demeanor simulating femininity, 
 nor did his behavior in any way betray the remarkable 
 
 manner in which his sexual life was being lived 
 
 Apart from his extremely meagre education, he is no 
 
 fool or dullard in other particulars It would seem 
 
 that his trade [professional female-impersonator and 
 
 f airie] is olied chiefly for the money there is in it 
 
 He claims he has never been arrested or otherwise 
 interfered with by the police 
 
 " . . . . He has always been possessed of the con- 
 trary sexual instinct. He always shunned women and 
 girls more or less, while yearning at the same time to" 
 assume female attire and enter into their domestic vo- 
 cations Believing himself designed by Nature to 
 
 play the very part he is playing in life, it was truly 
 remarkable to hear this nervous, loquacious, foul- 
 mouthed, and foul-minded fairie of the most degraded 
 slums of the multi-millioned city chatter about his ex- 
 periences 
 
 "Few writers in the field of psychiatry have en- 
 joyed what I had next the opportunity to observe 
 
 The putting on of female attire by a contrary sexed 
 male. [The paper details the putting on of the various 
 articles.] ... .He became very talkative. ... .telling of 
 some of his recent escapades .... gesticulating as we 
 
268 A "Man" Transformed into a Soubrette. 
 
 often see agitated girls do. . . .remarking that he was 
 very tired, owing to the fact that he had been 'ironing 
 all the forenoon.* [Androgynes gravitate toward 
 peculiarly feminine tasks.] .... 'What do you think of 
 that hat ? Is n't it a dandy ? I trimmed it myself.' .... 
 He was, without the slightest doubt, thoroughly in 
 earnest in all he said and did, and by no means was 
 he playing a part 'Dear me/ he said, 'I've forgot- 
 ten my ear-rings ; but you won't mind that ?' Upon my 
 assuring him that I liked young girls better without 
 them, he seemed relieved and proceeded to fit to his 
 head a. . . .blonde wig. . . .As he had recently shaved, 
 his face was quite smooth, and in a twinkling he made 
 it up with. . . .pink powder, with red pomade for the 
 lips 'Ha !' he said [after fully transformed out- 
 wardly into a soubrette, in the style of costume pre- 
 valent among courtesans at the date of J. W's appear- 
 ance before the doctor for wear in their resorts only, 
 but in 1921 affected for street wear by all butterflies of 
 fashion] 'I feel more like myself now, and I am ready 
 for the picture !'...." 
 

 
 The first of the following attempts to penetrate into Plato's 
 "world of ideas" and get at the real essence of things, and then 
 to express them in an ideal manner, was inspired by a chance 
 visit to the Whitestone station in October, 1921. Subsequently 
 I was seized with the desire to try out my muse in incorporating 
 some of my other emotions and experiences in verse. I had 
 essayed no metrical composition since 1905, the year of writing 
 the last of my Fairie Songs, the best of which were published 
 in the Autobiography of an Androgyne. 
 
 I understand by "poetry" the version of things seen in- 
 corporeally; things spiritualized or with a halo around them; 
 things as they exist in substance, in reality, back of their 
 superficial or phenomenal presentation — the version of things 
 that an individual's subconscious or subliminal self utters. 
 
 At present when I evolve verse, I try to lose myself to the 
 phenomenal world — the domain of sensation — and to let down 
 my bucket into the well of the subconscious, the subliminal; to 
 peer into the eternal, the infinite world (the domain of funda- 
 mental substance). The sensuous, material skin or crust of 
 this world of ideas is all that most children of Adam can 
 grasp. Only to poets and metaphysicians has Nature given a 
 rope of sufficient length that their buckets can reach as far 
 as the water level in the well of ideas. Nearly all poets even 
 of the first rank manage to flop into their buckets a few ex- 
 quisite thoughts as to eternal realities, and clothed in ap- 
 propriate language, only about once out of a score of attempts. 
 Nineteen-twentieths of their verse would better have been for- 
 ever withheld from the public's eyes, since it is merely arti- 
 ficial, nonsense doggerel. In that proportion of their work, 
 these poets of the first rank show themselves up merely as 
 bad rhymesters. 
 
 The editor of The Female-Impersonators declared "the book 
 would be better off without" my verse, but has kindly humored 
 my wish to include it. The reader's verdict may be that I, too, 
 am merely a bad rhymester, and thus put my work on a level 
 with the vast bulk of the outpourings and outdronings of our 
 best poets. 
 
 But I, as a would-be poet, labor under the disadvantage 
 of expressing sentiments of an androgyne. Even if there should 
 
 [269] 
 
270 Androgyne Verse. 
 
 really be any poetry in my own outdronings, no one but another 
 cndrogyne could recognize the fact, since it is next to impos- 
 sible for anybody to appreciate any literature unless they can 
 make its sentiments their own and identify themselves with 
 one of the characters. And the sexually full-fledged, who con- 
 stitute more than ninety-nine per cent of the reading public, 
 are obsessed by an irrational horror of androgynes. 
 
 I therefore beg the reader, in judging the follow- 
 ing verse, to bear in mind that it is not written by a 
 man about men, as the reader first thinks; but about 
 men by a pseudo-man; by a physical "man" who is 
 psy chicly a woman, and even physically a woman at 
 least thirty-three per cent. 
 
 I have read some of Mary Baker Eddy's verse, which her 
 disciples place on a level with the Psalms of David. But I 
 think the former weak and the latter perfect. Here again 
 we see that to judge verse to be good, one has to imagine it 
 one's own outpouring. I therefore do not expect any sexually 
 full-fledged person to declare of my verse (even if it were the 
 best ever written) anything else than that it is "far beneath 
 the worst doggerel. The mere thought of it is painful!" 
 
 For — I repeat — it is impossible for any one to judge poetry 
 objectively — only subjectively: that is, not according to the 
 merits of the verse, but according to whether the reader can 
 make the sentiments his own. 
 
 A sexually full-fledged literary confidant, who has read 
 the first two books of my trilogy, declared of my verse: "If 
 you publish it, it will cast ridicule and contempt on your whole 
 book. In the book, you have claimed culture, but when your 
 readers come to this verse, they will say that no one with the cul- 
 ture of a longshoreman would try to pass off such stuff as verse 
 even in fun, and that if you had the slightest tincture of liter- 
 ary taste, you would realize this. You will go down to posterity 
 in ridicule, and destroy all the good your books might other- 
 wise do." 
 
 But I persist in including the verse. If the quoted verdict 
 is correct, than I have "a screw loose" intellectually, as well as 
 being sexually and anatomically "a freak of Nature." The pub- 
 lished pieces show the psychologist what ultra-androgyne verse 
 is like. Besides, possible androgyne readers may be able to 
 appreciate this verse. 
 
 As three out of the four following "attempts" were first con- 
 ceived only in January, 1922 — after The Female-Impersonators 
 had gone to press — it has been impossible that they benefit by 
 the author's judgment after they have grown cold. 
 
Emotion * 271 
 
 (Inspired by sight of Whitestone station in 1921.) 
 
 Still stands the selfsame Whitestone station, 
 
 So sombre as night's shades fall; 
 At its north front do still halt trains, 
 
 While brakemen "Whitestone! Whitestone!" call. 
 
 My trysting-place in nineteen three 
 
 With warriors of the nation, 
 When I was frivolous and wild, 
 
 Was this old Whitestone station. 
 
 "Holy Ground" 
 
 Yea, holy ground its platform is; 
 
 It makes me sigh and ponder; 
 In my mind's eye those blue-clad forms 
 
 Still wait for me just yonder! 
 
 1 Attempt at poetical expression of experiences described 
 in prose on page 255 following. 
 
272 
 
 Emotion. 
 
 They met me at the train when I 
 From New York came, directed 
 
 To see and stroll about with "braves" 
 Of manhood unsuspected! 
 
 On balmy eves we stalked dark lanes, 
 No other person near us ; 
 
 No other's eye upon us gazed, 
 No other's ear could hear us. 
 
 What gallant, passionate lovers they! 
 
 Considerate of my pleasure ! 
 Uplifting to the highest bliss 
 
 That Eve on earth can measure ! 
 
 Returning to the porte cochere 
 Of that selfsame old station, 
 
 We lingered, till the whistle blew, 
 In blissful conversation. 
 
 "Old Porte Cochere, with Memories Dear Thou 
 Teernest !" 
 
Emotion. 
 
 273 
 
 What eyesore thou, old Porte Cochere, 
 To every traveller seemest ! 
 
 To me, howe'er, thou shelter gave ; 
 
 With memories dear thou teemest ! 
 
 The station's waiting-room with seats 
 
 Extending all around it, 
 'Whelms me with recollections fond, 
 
 Because unchanged I found it ! 
 
 For 'twas on these rude benches there, 
 When winter's winds were hurtling, 
 
 And travellers few and far between, 
 All evening sat we flirting. 
 
 The Unreplaced Slats on Which the Author Communed 
 
274 Emotion. 
 
 In words our conversation lagged ; 
 
 In substance it was silly ! 
 For all I said the evening through 
 
 Was: "How I love thee, Willie!" 
 
 We every confidence but breathed, 
 
 Lest some strange ear o'erhear us; 
 
 They guessed not — travellers — what we said; 
 There were none very near us. 
 
 Whene'er the train I took for town, 
 And we "Goodnight!" repeated, 
 
 "Farewell!" o'erwhelmed me as I left 
 And in the coach was seated. 
 
 Once rode with me a gallant three 
 To College Point, first station; 
 
 To have with me five minutes more 
 Before farewell ovation. 
 
 How charmed was I that period brief! 
 
 Its memory ever lingers; 
 As we sat holding hidden hands, 
 
 I felt their horny fingers. 
 
 "Three cheers for Jennie June !" they cried, 
 When finally they must leave me ; 
 
 "The soldiers' friend, and sweetheart too! 
 Let not our parting grieve thee !" 
 
 Gone are ye from my life for years, 
 
 You heroes ! Wonder boys ! 
 In memory though I hold you fast — 
 
 Forever perfect joys ! 
 Farewell ! 
 
Recollection x 275 
 
 O thou Fair as the sunrise on deep sea's green surge, 
 
 While the whitecaps seem dancing all around ! 
 Fair as sunset from mountain's sheer precipice's verge, 
 
 Seen o'er maze of high ridges snowbound ! 
 Even Fairer than the rose, of all flowers the fairest ; 
 
 Beyond Vatican's Apollo Belvedere ; 
 Bud McDonald, youth's soulmate, of beauty the rarest, 
 
 Adolescent wert thou without peer ! 
 
 First, Beau Brummel wert thou, so fussy about 
 clothes, 
 
 immaculate Buddie McDee ! 
 
 Dirt and slovenness cat, never more than thou, loaths ; 
 
 Must be brushed every hour from dust free ; 
 Every lock of thine hair with worried care laid in 
 place ; 
 
 As a girl didst thou prink — I can vow! 
 But of all the young bloods of Rialto's fast race, 
 
 Not one sweller was costumed than thou ! 
 
 Beheld one the shining patent leather of thy shoe, 
 
 And both hands decorated with rings ; 
 Marked thy wiles through which dude hoi polloi's favor 
 doth woo, 
 
 One would say : "All from effeminacy springs !" 
 "Not a bit!" I must answer. For Mack, Sport as 
 well, 
 
 Was a crack shot with pistol and ball ; 
 How he hunted, coldblooded, dumb beasts he did tell ; 
 
 Furry creatures clubbed dead ; cursed them all ! 
 
 1 For prose description of the personality that I have here 
 attempted to depict poetically, see page 114 following. 
 
276 Recollection. 
 
 Best of all : — an Adonis wert thou, Bud McDee, 
 
 With incomparable red peachlike cheeks ; 
 Threads of eyebrows so cleancut! — in memory I see — 
 
 As o'er her eyes a soubrette alone seeks ; 
 With thy pearls of teeth, cherry lips — beloved sir — 
 
 And as well chiselled nose as can be, 
 How I've wondered that thou and I intimates were ! — 
 
 Explanation : — God gave thee to me ! 
 
 I again in fond memory behold before me, 
 
 Pinkish mountain of loveliness tower ; 
 Buddie's forma divina, au naturel, see; 
 
 How his charms, yea unmatched, did o'erpower ! 
 An "eyeful" his two breasts, with fine gold scraggy 
 hair ; 
 
 Graceful curves; rotund body and limb; 
 With his robust ribs bursting through skin so fair, 
 
 And his deep-channeled back breathing vim ! 
 
 Once Unequaled "Young Fellow"! Six-and-twenty 
 long years 
 
 Now have rolled by since thou wert All That ! 
 Art to-day gibbering sot, maybe suffering jeers, 
 
 With foul trousers and torn greasy hat? 
 For the cup cherished thou that glad makes the sad 
 heart. — 
 
 How I wonder! Where sleptest last night? 
 Is vitality wasted ? In grave resting art ? — 
 
 Us together soon lead, Kindly Light! 
 
Recollection. 
 
 277 
 
 "The Boy of the Piave" 
 (America's Gift to Italy in 1921) 
 
278 Memories * 
 
 I dream to-night of the gay bright lights 
 
 Where I sought recreation ; 
 While meek I sat at feet of profs 
 
 To gain an education: 
 I studied hard six dreary eves, 
 
 But when the seventh came, 
 Bade "au revoir" to books and grind, 
 
 And skipped to Rialto'S game. 
 
 There where lurked pleasure's devotees 
 
 Giant Kill-joy never came ; 
 I met there New York's wildest swains, 
 
 And buxoms of ill fame: 
 We revelled all the evening through — 
 
 Fine fellowship, I say ! 
 I ne'er happed on politer folk 
 
 Than in Rialto gay. 
 
 And which was I, kind sir, dost ask ? 
 
 Was I a bad roue? 
 Or shameless demi-virgin wild, 
 
 In paint and powder gay? — 
 "But I was neither this nor that !" 
 
 Such answer here I set; 
 While youth in form, I chose to take 
 
 Diversion as soubrette. 
 
 The young bloods pardoned me — they said- 
 For wearing hated breeches ! 
 
 "For thou art not a real male ; 
 
 Thou'rt like yon winking witches 
 
 1 See page 103 following. 
 
Memories. 279 
 
 Who throng these noisy promenades 
 
 Their favors fair to sell; 
 And kissing thee we deem as sweet 
 
 As kissing ma'moiZelle! 
 
 "Lik'st thou that we thee sweetheart call ? — 
 
 We'll humor thy desire ; 
 Sit on our laps while we sip wine ; 
 
 Let's flirt until we tire ; 
 To break thy shapely corset stays, 
 
 We'll try our best, dear Jenn ; 
 But thou must mimic maid thy best ; 
 
 For us : — the part of men !" . . r „ m 
 
 To have love made by youthful swains, 
 
 To me was highest bliss; 
 In the bright dives where scores beheld, 
 
 No, — shrinked we not to kiss : — 
 Of yore in gay Rialto's halls 
 
 Knew folk no self-restraint ; 
 Insane e'en sometimes acted fools ! 
 
 Those dens no place for saint ! . w M w 
 
 I'm prone to-night to philosophize : — 
 
 Why did I gravitate 
 Toward Rialto's racy denizens 
 
 When moved to dissipate? 
 'Twas just because I sought and found, 
 
 In Rialto's "swell" gallants, 
 The opposites and complements 
 
 For whom my spirit pants 
 
 comrade of Rialto's halls 
 
 Of nineties of century past — 
 
280 Memories. 
 
 Should'st read these lines, some former pal, 
 "Jennie June" remembered hast; 
 
 Now after twenty-six years, 
 
 I hail thee with heartfelt greeting; 
 
 Beseech Benediction on thine head, 
 In lieu of present meeting. 
 
 French Doll Baby * 
 
 Young bloods prom'nade Fourteenth Street's pave — 
 
 Each eve out for a lark ; 
 Their eyes "peeled" for French doll babies; 
 With whom they sigh to spark ; 
 Why admire the fraidcat babies, 
 
 Who weep easily? 
 The helpless crippled sex e'en seek! — 
 Harebrained gentility! .... 
 
 Cheeks a beauteous red through rouge puff; 
 Pink powder (pretty, pretty ! ! ! ) 'pon nose; 
 One inhales as she nigh minceth, 
 
 Such soothing scent of rose! 
 Locks — so silklike — reach to shoulders; 
 
 Gown of "art" design; 
 Coquette extreme must she be sure; 
 
 All signs she doth combine. 
 
 i See THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS, page 153. 
 Second stanza is a free translation from Beranger. For 
 original, see AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, page 
 viii. 
 
French Doll Baby. 281 
 
 When a young blood spieth dolly, 
 Cutely mincing- Fourteenth Street ; 
 Then the young- blood smileth sweetly, 
 
 And, stranger e'en, doth greet : 
 Replies she smilingly "Good evening!" 
 
 Surely she is fly! 
 Too, overjoyed because of having 
 
 Bewitched a stalwart "guy." 
 
 "Little tootsy-wootsy ! " cries guy, 
 
 "Art ravishingly cute! 
 Thou art, yea, a pretty Pussie ! Pussie, Pussie ! ! ! 
 
 Ne'er saw I such a beaut!" 
 Answereth she in mellifluous voice: 
 
 "And I 'Strong Hans' thee call ! 
 Thy frame so large and powerful ! 
 
 Not spindling thou, yet tall !" 
 
 They acquainted barely minute, 
 
 Such confidences express! 
 As only hubby — hidden, secret — 
 
 Doth glad to spouse confess: 
 Bold gallant the French doll calls "Wifie !" 
 
 While she e'en feels that he 
 To her already united is — 
 
 The twain, twin souls, to be ! 
 
 Reader, never heardst thou such words ! 
 
 Much mush! (as"Kiddo! Kiddo !"— "Kitty ! Kitty!" 1 ) 
 
 1 Seemingly natural language of "pup love", the girl re- 
 peating the former a hundred times in five minutes, and the 
 adolescent the latter. Both also cry these words simultaneously 
 while gazing into each other's eyes. 
 
282 French Doll Baby. 
 
 Passing strange the way of young blood 
 With French doll baby pretty! 
 
 That sexual difference existeth 
 Renders twain insane; 
 
 Except for Nature's procreative plan, 
 
 These instincts — how inane! . . „ 
 
 Holdeth French doll from "guy" a secret; 
 
 Yes, surely she can act! 
 Only after hour's deception, 
 
 Revealeth she the fact ; 
 When she's found that she can trust him; 
 
 Can reveal her whim : 
 In burst of laughter doth disclose : 
 
 "My real, true name is 'Jim' ! " 
 
ANNOUNCEMENT OF THIRD OF TRILOGY 
 m\t JtibMs of % Pttberfoorlb 
 
 Sequel to Autobiography of an Androgyne 
 and The Female-Impersonators 
 
 By Ralph Werther — Jennie June 
 
 Edited by 
 
 Alfred W. Herzog, Ph. B., A. M., M. D. 
 
 (Editor Medico-Legal Journal) 
 
 To be published, in the fall of 1922, by the MEDICO-LEGAL 
 JOURNAL. At least 65,000 words and a dozen illustrations. 
 Cloth. Price three dollars, including postage with- 
 in United States. The three volumes of the TRILOGY, 
 (an aggregate of over 200,000 words) ordered on 
 the same date, eight dollars, including postage. 
 The AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDRO- 
 GYNE, ordered on the same date with 
 one other of the TRILOGY, six dol- 
 lars. Price of AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 alone, four dollars including 
 postage. 
 
 The author of the Trilogy, one of the half-dozen 
 most remarkable bisexuals known to medical science, 
 while living in New York City as college student and 
 subsequently professional "man," had, incidentally, 
 a six years' variegated experience (age nineteen to 
 twenty-five) in the Underworld of the metropolis. In 
 
 [283] 
 
284 The Riddle of the Underworld. 
 
 the Autobiography, besides an exhaustive analysis of 
 his own intuitions, beliefs, courses of reasoning, emo- 
 tions, penchants, and instincts, the author merely out- 
 lined his manner of life and adventures, particularly 
 while impersonating a female. In The Female-Im- 
 personators, he undertook little more, in description 
 of Underworld life, than to detail the experiences of 
 cultured ultra-androgynes. 
 
 In the Riddle of the Underworld, the author of 
 the Trilogy — 
 
 Gives the history of New York's white-light and red- 
 light districts since the beginning of the nine- 
 teenth century; analyzes the causes of vice and 
 crime on the basis of his intimate mingling with 
 the Underworlders ; shows why a "vicious tenth" 
 exists in all cities, and how the Overworld (which 
 constitutes nine-tenths of the population of 
 Christian lands) should regulate the former. 
 
 Depicts life in New York's poorest immigrant quar- 
 ters and tenements — in its reality because he saw 
 it as an insider, the denizens of the slums and the 
 Underworld shamefacedly veiling the fundamen- 
 tal facts of their existence from charity and soci- 
 ological investigators, but admitting the author 
 to everything because he mingled with them as a 
 non-intellectual and fairie. 
 
 Depicts life in the lowest type of slum lodging-house, 
 once the author's home, and the night life in gen- 
 eral of the Bowery at the height of the latter's 
 vogue as New York's principal red-light street, 
 the author at the time being one of its "filles-de- 
 joie." 
 
The Riddle of the Underworld. 285 
 
 Depicts, lastly, in great detail, his career as female- 
 impersonator in New York's slums and red-light 
 and white-light districts and the life of "bosom 
 friends" of the Underworld : Young bloods sow- 
 ing their wild oats ; middle-aged extreme alcoholic 
 wrecks; extreme drug addicts; intellectual mild 
 androgynes during the hours when Nature drives 
 them to a double life in the Underworld ; low-class 
 "fairies"; filles-de-joie in their hey-day; wrecks 
 of such in their thirties ; "confidence men" ; gang- 
 sters, gunmen, and burglars (whom Providence 
 gave the author as soul-mates) . 
 
 THE CLOSING VOLUME OF THE TRILOGY 
 
 DEPICTING THE LIFE-EXPERIENCE OF A 
 
 BISEXUAL UNIVERSITY "MAN" 
 
INDEX 
 
 (and., abb. for androgyne or androgynism) 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Abraham Myers adventure, 124 
 Abstinence induces melanch., 
 
 44, 72 
 Absurd legal superstitions, 196 
 Acquired or congenital, 16, 
 
 199 
 Actors, androgynes as, 87, 97, 
 
 100, 177, 206 
 Adam of Angelo, 215, 216 
 Adonises, 114, 236, 257, 258 
 "Adopted sons", 187, 214, 257, 
 
 258 
 Aesthetes often effeminate, 25 
 Aestheticism of and., 17, 200, 
 
 224, 231 
 Age-group sought, 226 
 Age sobered me, 256 
 Alcoholics, 109 
 Aliases, choosing, 94 
 
 necessity of, 93 
 Ambition, author's, 79, 83 
 American aboriginees, 47 
 AM. JOURNAL OF SEXOL- 
 OGY, 266 
 An Adonis or a Hercules? 258 
 Anatomy of author, 84, 86, 87, 
 
 91 
 Alexander the Great, 29, 30, 
 
 38 
 America's most impious, 184 
 Anaphrodites, 13 
 "Androgyne" and "gynander" 
 
 terms, 155 
 Androgyne expedients, 241 
 outcast, 159 
 Platonic marriage, 217 
 stamping-grounds, 226 
 talk, 153 
 Androgynes, 15 et al. 
 are aesthetes, 17, 224 
 are goody-goodies, 51 
 banishment of, 42 
 benefactors, 36, 220, 221 
 compelled to fabricate, 242 
 
 (cultured), 146ff., 158, 164 
 
 ff ., 198 ff ., 237 ff., 259 
 gifted, 36, 37, 48, 161 
 in war, 255 
 linguists, 152 
 loud dressers, 104, 131, 223, 
 
 225, 231 
 more numerous among cul- 
 tured, 43, 265 
 nabobize menials, 193 
 not Sodomites, 223 
 not to marry, 20, 205 
 resourceful, 174 
 wish wife for "sons", 218 
 Androgynes' angelic dispo., 38 
 families unsuspi., 183, 239 
 favorites fortunate, 176, 178, 
 
 193, 208, 256, 257 
 one offence, 50 
 relatives ashamed to prose- 
 cute, 246 
 Androgynism, causes of: See 
 Cause of and. 
 nationally healthful, 48 
 not degeneracy, 46 
 stigmata of: See Stigmata 
 of and. 
 Angel to fiend, 138 
 Angelo-Phyllis, 153, 198 ff. 
 Anglo-American law unintell., 
 
 179 
 Apollo, 25, 26 
 Apostro. to lost soulmate, 116 
 
 to the supreme man, 145 
 Apotheosis of an and., 211 
 Are androgynes supermen? 37 
 Army, bobtailed from, 255 
 Arrest of androgynes, 150 
 Arrested development, 49, 149 
 Artificial breasts, 264, 265 
 Assassins of high morality, 
 
 249 
 Assault t.nd battery, 141 ff., 
 256, 26: 
 
 [286] 
 
Index. 
 
 287 
 
 Associates (author's) of Bow- 
 ery, 285 
 childhood, 54, 59 
 Fourteenth Street, 118, 130, 
 
 215 
 Stuyvesant Square, 113, 130 
 Association of and., 146 ff., 232 
 Astigmatism (mental) of and., 
 
 x 
 Author a repository for Un- 
 derworld's secrets, 5 
 robbed two hundred times, 
 141 
 Author's attempt at suicide, 
 252, 253 
 contribution to sociology, 96 
 conversations with oppo- 
 
 sites, 256 
 flirtations mushy, 133 
 foretaste of Z's fate, 251 
 menopause, 166, 167 
 third "adopted son", 257 
 trilogy, 3 
 
 visage the most marred, 144 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN 
 ANDROGYNE, vii, x, xi, 
 3, 16, 43, 50, 59, 72, 83, 
 86, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 103, 
 122, 131, 133, 166, 228, 
 236, 239, 251, 252, 253, 
 255, 258 
 Aversion to feminine society, 
 75, 119, 183, 201, 231, 260 
 
 B. A. a fairie, 118 
 Bacon, Francis, 34, 35, 49 
 
 Roger, 39, 80 
 Badge of fairie-ism, 104 
 Ball games, 65, 257 
 Banishment of and., 42 
 Battery Park, 226 
 Beard growth of author, 84 
 Beardless men (natural) 19, 
 
 29, 32, 151, 264, 265 
 Beard scanty, 169, 199, 250 
 Bears, 252, 254 
 
 Beer-garden adventure, 212 ff. 
 Being dogged, 112, 113 
 Belle of the ball, 185 
 Benighted lawyers, 196 
 
 leaders of thought, 41 
 physicians, 74, 176, 204, 220 
 Bent for woman's toil, 224, 
 
 227, 257, 268 
 Bias rules in sex domain, 163 
 Bible and sex instinct, 13, 14, 
 
 15, 44, 73 
 on homosexuality, 51, 160 
 Biceps unrivalled, 134 
 Bicycle race, six-day, 124 
 Bigotry (sexual), 2, 22, 23, 39, 
 
 41, 51, 52, 72, 73, 74, 80, 
 
 87, 95, 139, 147, 149, 154, 
 
 159 ff., 160, 167, 168, 180, 
 
 191, 193, 195, 197, 202, 
 
 209, 213, 220, 222, 239, 
 
 240, 245 
 "Biog. of Passive Pederast", 
 
 266 
 "Biol. Sport of Fairieism", 262 
 Blackmail, viii, 158, 163, 178ff. 
 
 182, 185 ff., 217, 224, 257 
 Blarney triumphant, 125 
 Bobtailed from army, 255 
 Boon of an "adopted son", 189 
 Bowery, 169, 207 
 a magnet, 203 ff . 
 assoc. of author, 284, 285 
 "boys", 172, 176, 205, 207, 
 
 285 
 Brain, author's, 83 
 Breasts (artificial), 264, 265 
 Bright intellects, 36, 258 
 Broadway Tenderloin, 104, 125, 
 
 226 
 Brownies, 89 
 Buffalo Bill's show, 254 
 Bugle, 212 
 Burglar alarm, 225 
 Business career of author, 
 
 90 ff., 253, 255 
 
 Cassar, 31, 37, 38 
 
 "Calvin Luther", 217, 219 ff. 
 
 Caravan, 253 
 
 Carpenter, Edward, 17, 37 
 
 Castration, 16, 67 
 
 Catamite, 27 
 
 Cat in a strange garret, 172 
 
 Cause of androgynism, 18, 46, 
 
288 
 
 Index. 
 
 49, 60, 70, 73, 147, 148, 
 149 
 female - impersonation, 99, 
 100, 101, 148 
 sex intensity, 78, 164, 165 
 -Central Park, 226 
 Cere. Herm., 151 ff., 200, 224 
 Change of life, 165, 166 
 Chantage: See Blackmail 
 Chevelure, feminine, 264 
 Chevelure of author, 85, 86 
 Childhood female-impersona- 
 tion, 62, 66, 170 
 Childhood's sex influences, 165 
 Childlike and womanlike, 86 
 Childlikeness of author, 83, 85, 
 
 88, 91 
 "Child of the Devil", 136 
 Child sex expression, 54, 57, 
 
 59, 60, 61, 64, 78 
 Choosing aliases, 94 
 Christians' morality, 196 
 Christine of Sweden, 38 
 Church and public opinion 
 
 guilty, 245, 261 
 Clerical profession, 42, 43, 44, 
 
 191 
 Climacteric, 166 
 Coasting, 66 
 Coddled in college, 85 
 College course, 82 
 
 preparation, 65, 72 
 Common and. practices, 158 
 
 type of sexual insanity, 137 
 Compens. by Providence, 83, 
 
 256 
 Comstock, Anthony, 92 
 Conclus. from life exp., 73 
 Confessions to author, 5, 256 
 Confidants of every-day cir- 
 cle, 91, 95, 144 
 Congen. or acquired, 16, 199 
 Conscientious murderer, 235 
 Cont. Europe contrast, 179 
 Conversations, sample, 107 ff., 
 133 ff., 152 ff., 188 ff. 
 with sexual opposites, 256 
 Cornbury. Lord, 38 
 Corsets, 250 
 
 Court empl. ultra-crim., 93 
 
 Court-martials, 94, 257 
 
 Cowardice of and., 67, 68, 75, 
 224 225 
 
 Cowboys, 253, 254, 258 
 
 "Crime against Nature", 195, 
 196 
 
 Criminal prudery, 61 
 ultra-, 113, 138 ff. 
 
 Crooks are boastful, 122, 123 
 
 Cross, author's, 143 
 
 Cross-dressing, 62, 66, 67, 75, 
 87, 103, 104, 108, 131, 135, 
 152, 157, 165, 170, 199, 
 200, 201, 202, 209, 211, 
 237, 239, 240, 244, 246, 
 248, 250, 264, 265, 267 
 
 Cultured and., 146 ft"., 158, 
 164 ff., 170 ff., 198 ff., 259, 
 et al. 
 
 Cure for homosexuality, 16, 20, 
 
 Curiosity, author a, 84 
 
 Dalliance, 256 
 
 Damocles, sword of, 225, 231 
 Dark ages, 39, 80, 93, 160, 220 
 Daughter of regiment, 255 
 Day dreams, 113, 170, 203, 259 
 Death experienced, 142 
 
 preferred to disci., 230 
 
 to the traitor, 128 
 Decline of nations, 45 
 Degeneracy, and. not, 46 
 "Degenerates", 49, 221, 252, 
 
 263 
 De Joux, 17 
 Depilation, 32, 100, 152, 169, 
 
 185, 199 
 "Depraved" defined, 160 
 Detectives, and. as, 123, 
 
 author as, 5, 238, 284 
 Development, arrested, 49, 149 
 Disclosure to "every-day" as- 
 sociates, 91, 95, 144 
 Disposition of and., 38, 51 
 Diversions of girl-boys, 62, 65, 
 
 66, 68, 71, 72 
 Divorce, 7, 12 
 Does fairie exist? 263 
 Dog-faced boys, 84 
 
Index. 
 
 289 
 
 Dogged, 113, 208 
 
 Double-life, 97, 101, 104, 118, 
 
 119 
 Dressing, cross: see Cross-dr. 
 
 for a spree, 202 
 Dress-making of and., 68, 232 
 Dual personality, 92, 97, 101, 
 
 102, 112, 119 
 "Duchess of Austria", 176 
 
 Early consc. of deform., 74 
 
 Earmarks of and.: See Stig- 
 mata 
 
 Ear-rings, 266 
 
 Effects of abstinence, 44, 72 
 child sex-expression, 78, 164, 
 165 
 
 Effeminacy common in aes- 
 thetes, 25, 231 
 that is culpable, 47 
 
 Egotism, 163, 168 
 
 Ellis, Dr. Havelock, 37, 48, 50, 
 158 
 
 Elmira Reformatory, 138 
 
 Endocrinology's testimony, 16 
 
 Enemies of truth & justice, 4 
 
 Enlistment in army, 257 
 
 Environment, infl., 132 
 
 Epworth League, 127 
 
 Erotic pleasure's value, 72 
 
 Eternally dovetailed, 211 
 
 Eunice, 168 ff., 206 
 
 Eunuchs, 20 
 
 Europe, continental, 179 
 
 Euterpe, 184 ff. 
 
 Everv-day circle of author, 85, 
 91 ff., 95, 102, 118, 119, 144 
 
 Experiencing death, 142 
 
 Exp. from univ., author's, 95 
 
 Fabrication of and., 242 
 
 Fags: See Fairies 
 
 Fairie apprenticeship, au- 
 thor's, 103 
 bachelor of arts, 118 
 does he really exist, 263 
 
 Fairie-ism, badge of, 104 
 "biological sport of", 262 
 
 "Fairies", 89, 109, 150, 255, 
 262 ff., 266 ff., et al. 
 
 Fairies best stool pigeons, 123 
 extreme dressers, 104, 131, 
 231, 268 
 
 Fairsea, Mr., 159 ff. 
 
 "Fairy and Lady Lover", 262 
 
 "Fallen angels", 114, 118, 205, 
 285 
 
 Families ignorant of bisexual 
 members, 62, 183, 239 
 
 F'ank, 54, 59, 61 
 
 Faro, 127 
 
 Fasting, 79 
 
 Father's assert, disc, 247 
 
 Favorites of androgynes, 7, 
 107 ff., 114, 130, 131, 208, 
 209 ff., 214 ff., 227, 232, 
 233, 234, 236, et al. 
 
 "Fed up" on falsehoods, 254 
 
 Fellatio, 59, 60, 64, 182, 228, 
 23 i, 236, 238, 255, 256 
 effects of, 99, 235, 256 
 
 Female-impersonate intoxica- 
 tion, 104, 106, 111, 212 
 
 Female-impersonation, 32, 46, 
 66, 93, 99, 100, 101, 103 ff., 
 131, 150, 157, 171, 177, 
 183 ff., 201 ff., 205 ff., 209 
 ff., 235, 243, 256, 261, 263, 
 267, et al. 
 cause of, 99, 100, 101, 148 
 in childhood, 66, 170 
 instinctive, 99 
 obsession, 260 
 
 sprees, 103 ff., 170, 175 ff., 
 201 ff., 207, 211 ff., 218, 
 240, 241, 248, 251, 255, 
 259 
 
 Female-impersonators, gifted, 
 108 
 popular, 107 
 
 Female with male genitals, 
 176 
 
 Femin. anat. of and., 64, 66 
 
 Feminesqueness of author 
 recognized by business as- 
 sociates, 91 
 
 Feminine chevelure, 264 
 figure recognized, 87 
 
 Firearms, horror of, 75 
 
290 
 
 Index. 
 
 First real, of abnor., 70, 73 
 
 Flagellation, 79 
 
 Flirtation, 107 ff., 130, 133 ff., 
 166, 207 
 
 Fort X, 245 
 Y 255 ff. 
 
 Fourteenth St. Rialto, 98, 104, 
 106, 117, 118, 130, 208, 
 215, 226 
 
 Fourth sex, 98 
 
 Piank White, 168 ff., 206 
 
 Freaks of nature, 84, 263, 270 
 
 French doll baby, 91, 97, 98, 
 101, 102, 104, 153, 280 
 
 French leave, 197, 257 
 
 Freq. of and., 17, 18, 253 
 fairie-ism, 107 
 
 Frigidity of and. toward wom- 
 en, 226, 231, 260 
 
 Full-fledged instincts equally 
 unaesthetic, 136 
 
 Gamblers, 114 
 
 Gambler's antecedents, 117 
 
 Gambling a master passion, 
 
 120 
 Gangsters, 171 ff., 205 ff., 260, 
 
 261 
 Ganymede, 27 
 Gas-house district, 137 
 Genius, 36, 263 
 George's antecedents, 215 
 Gethsemane, author's. 77 ff . 
 Girl-boy diversions, 62, 65, 66, 
 68, 71, 72 
 
 reasons for suicide, 68 
 God will avenge androgynes, 
 
 52 
 God-intoxicated youth, 70, 73, 
 
 76, 77, 79, 143 
 Goethe, 93 
 Goody-good, of and., 51, 180 
 
 a "fille-de joie", 204 
 
 transformed, 204 
 Grabowsky, Dr., 17 
 Grand Central, 206, 208 
 
 Union, 129 
 Great cy. desir., 200, 201, 203 
 
 delusion, the, 168 
 Greeks, 27, 47, 48, 162 
 
 Guest murders, 227, 229, 234, 
 
 250 
 Gun-men, 171 
 Gynanders, 98, 154 ff., 199 
 
 love androgynes, 154, 155 
 Gynander's fate, 154 ff. 
 
 Hacked to death, 228 
 Half-and-half as to sex, 15, 
 
 19, 22, 201, 205, 209 
 Hanging and., 251 
 Hangman's noose, 247 
 Hare-brained sex, 211, 280 
 Harmlessness of and. and in- 
 version, viii, 28, 42, 50, 
 147, 161, 192, 209, 220, 
 221, 236, 263 
 
 Harvey Green, 131 ff., 144, 149 
 Health of author, 99, 235 
 Hercules, 236, 257, 258 
 
 an unrivalled, 131 ff. 
 Hermaphrodites, 21 
 
 psychic, 19 
 Hermaphroditoi, 151 ff., 164 ff. 
 Hermaphroditos, 27 
 
 Cercle, 151 ff., 200, 224 
 Hero-worship, 134 
 Herzog, Dr. A. W., i, vii ff., 
 Hirschfield, Dr. M., 18 
 Homocide Bureau, 247 
 Homos, at climacteric, 166 
 
 Bible on, 44, 51, 160 
 
 (chronic) congenital, ix, 16, 
 
 20, 46 
 
 cure for, 16, 20 
 "Homosexuals" a misnomer, 
 254 
 no worse than hetero., 148 
 Hon., author's bosom friend, 
 
 85 
 Hotel Comfort, 109 
 Hotel X, 156 
 
 Housekp. of and., 201, 226, 257 
 How milk on 14th St., 126 
 Howard, Dr. W. L., 27, 37 
 Hypocrites, 11, 115. See also 
 Pharis. 
 
 Immoral, novelty in N. Y., 194 
 Imprisonment of and., 81, 149, 
 
Index. 
 
 291 
 
 191 ff., 209, 213, 263 ff. 
 Incognito necessary, 200 
 Indian country, 258 
 Industry of author, 255 
 Infantilism, 38, 61, 84, 88, 90, 
 
 156 
 Infatuation, 187 
 Inherited lechery, 56 
 In high spirits, 241, 242 
 Inquis. author, 122, 132, 150, 
 
 167 
 Instinct, female-imp., 99 
 Intellect of author, 82, 83 
 
 androgynes, 36, 83, 263, 267 
 Intellectual aristocrat brow- 
 beaten by pleb., 195 
 Intoxication, female-imperson- 
 ate, 104, 106, 111, 212 
 Irresponsibility of and., 163 
 Is bisex. worst crime? 147 
 "I want to die!" 69 
 
 Javerts, 197 
 
 "Jennie June", origin, 93 
 Jennie Lind, 94 
 Jesus, 15 
 
 Jilted, 115, 138, 251, 252, 254 
 Joseph (of Egypt), 220 
 JOURNAL OF SEXOLOGY, 
 37, 110 
 
 Kant, 14 
 
 Keep tots sexually clean, 60 
 
 Key stolen, 142 
 
 Knit souls, 122, 123, 210 
 
 Krafft-Ebing, Dr., 15, 158 
 
 Lake Ontario, 117 
 
 Law, Ang.-Amer., unintell., 179 
 
 Law clerk, 92 
 
 Laws, change of, viii, 1 
 
 Lawyers, benighted, 196 
 
 Leader of a Bowery gang, 207 
 
 Leaders of th't benight., 41 
 
 ignore evidence, 162 
 
 murderers, 150, 209, 245, 261 
 Lecturer on sexo., author, 256 
 Legal adoption, 217, 218 
 
 persecution of androgynes, 
 1, 93, 143, 161, 162, 179, 
 
 196, 213, 265 
 superstitions, 196 
 Leland, Chas. G., 37 
 Lichtenstein, Dr. P. M., 16, 262 
 Life story told sweeth., 256 
 Lind, Earl, 92, 94, 95 
 Loathing of androgynes, 228, 
 
 238, 242, 245, 246, 251, 
 
 253 ff., 261 
 a murder motive, 157, 232 
 Lohengrin, 137 
 Lotharios, 107 ff., 118, 130 
 Love-letters, author's, 95 
 LOVE'S COMING-OF-AGE, 
 
 17, 37, 48 
 Lumbering camps, 253 
 
 Madison Sq., 226 
 Garden, 124, 254 
 Male figure more artistic, 157 
 
 qual. that knit fern., 258 
 Man and woman in one body, 
 112 
 
 ashamed of his nature, 168 
 
 not rational, 39 ff., 163 
 
 -slaughter, 243 
 
 transf. into soubr., 268 
 
 woman, & infant in one, 88 
 Man's prudery almost fatal, 80 
 
 causes many murders, 157 
 Mandatory of society, 222, 233, 
 
 235, 238 
 Manner of life of and., 200, 
 
 224, 257, 264 
 "Manon Lescaut", 151 
 Many fern. -imp. expl., 240 
 Mardi gras, 184 
 Marriage covers sins, 218 
 
 of and., 20, 29, 31, 217 
 Marry, androgynes not to, 20, 
 
 205 
 Martin, 118 
 
 Masked ball, 157, 182 ff 
 Match-heads eaten, 255 
 Maternal instincts, 177 
 McDonald, B., 116, 119 ff., 275 
 Medical exam., 250, 260, 261 
 
 superstition. 20 
 MEDICAL LIFE, 262 
 
292 
 
 Index. 
 
 MEDICAL REV. OF RE- 
 VIEWS, 262 
 MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL, 
 
 viiff., 4 
 Melancholia of and., 44, 62, 
 
 67, 68, 69, 72, 73, 74, 
 
 76 ff., 80, 101, 103, 104, 
 
 195, 201, 202, 209, 239, 
 
 252, 254 
 Menopause, 166 
 
 of author, 166, 167 
 Men-women: See Gynanders. 
 Methodists, 117, 193 
 Method of robbery, 140 ff. 
 Michelangelo, 32, 37, 38, 161, 
 
 215, 216 
 Mildly androgynous, 18, 151 
 
 virile, 11, 220, 221 
 Military prison, 257 
 Millinery of and., 200, 268 
 Miners, 253 
 
 Misanthrope, making a, 192 
 Missionary work of author, xi, 
 
 1, 2, 81, 167, 245 
 Mistresses, 253 
 "Mith Nighty", 157 
 Modesty of girl-boys, 64, 68 
 Mohawk valley, 132, 138 
 Moll, Dr A., 17 
 Mollie Dale, 155 ff. 
 Monandry not for and., 182 
 "Monsters", 1, 42, 180, 191, 
 
 222, 233, 238, 244, 252, 
 
 254 
 "Monte Carlo", 120, 126 ff. 
 Morality of and., 49, 51, 180, 
 
 222 
 of Christians, 196 
 Morgue, 260 
 Moron, 83, 90 
 Most and. ultra-relig., 43 
 
 shelt. 2 went to bad, 55 
 Mr. Skirt, 186 ff. 
 Mulberry St., 103, 138 
 Murder motive in loathing of 
 
 and., 157, 232 
 Murdered by a guest, 227, 229, 
 
 234, 250 
 Murderer (consc), 235, 249 
 
 mand. of soc, 222, 233, 235, 
 
 238 
 Murd. and. not necessary, 254 
 Murders of and., viii, 1, 142, 
 
 149, 157, 162, 208, 221 ff., 
 
 227, 231, 235, 237 ff., 254, 
 
 256, 259 ff. 
 Muscles of author, 84 
 My life's motto, 77 
 
 tempta. hardly eq., 78 
 Myers, Abraham, 121, 124 ff. 
 
 Nabob, by and., 236, 256, 257 
 Names of and., 93, 100, 101, 
 
 151, 157, 176, 219 
 Nathan's parable, 147 
 Nations, decline of, 45 
 Natural monogamy, 12 
 
 polygamy, 10 
 Nature indie, rear, as girl, 65 
 
 to be blamed, 163 
 Nature's nobleman, 254 
 Neckties, 104, 260 
 New York Harbor, 237 
 
 Beau Brummel, 115 ff. 
 Newton, Isaac, 14 
 No alcohol, no ven. dis., 110 
 Non-congenital homos., ix 
 Non-resist. of and., 206, 241, 
 
 248 
 Non-segregation, 161 
 Not cause decl. nat., 47 
 Not willingly half-and-h., 201 
 Now man, now woman, 3, 190 
 Nursing by and., 255 
 Nymph, (psy.), 60, 169, 257 
 
 Obed. to Nat. gave peace, 101 
 Occupations of and., 16, 43 
 Onanism, 12, 83 
 Onanists (mutual), 20 
 One offence of and., 50 
 Opposites attract, 258 
 Outcast and., 159 
 Outlook on life at 11, 67 
 Overconscientiousness, 71, 220 
 
 Parents killed by offs., 254 
 
 take time for children! 165 
 Parents' duty, 60, 61 
 
Index. 
 
 293 
 
 Paresis, 148 
 
 Hall, 146 ff., 181 
 "Pass, pederast, biog. of", 266 
 Pathics, 60 
 
 Paul (author's soulmate), 118 
 Paul, St., 14 
 Pederasty (active), 20 
 
 (passive), 20, 266 
 Pedro, 126 ff. 
 Perennial youth of and., 91, 
 
 151, 228, 255 
 Persecution of and., 149, 180, 
 
 193, 197, 244, 246, 251, 
 
 261 
 Personality (dual), 92, 97, 101, 
 
 102, 112, 119 
 Petits-jesus, 51, 147 
 Phariseeism of public, 4, 11, 
 
 23, 159 ff., 181, 193, 252 
 Phyllis, 153, 198 ff. 
 antecedents, 200 
 finds herself, 206, 207 
 passes on, 221 
 Physicians 
 
 dicta, 16, 49, 74, 143, 149, 
 
 204, 220 ff. 
 narrowminded, 144 
 Physique of author, 84, 89, 
 
 108 
 Plato, 27, 29, 37, 161 
 Plat. mar. of and., 166, 217, 
 
 239 
 Plum, 159 ff. 
 Plumpness of and., 20 
 Policeman, 213, 247, 260 
 Portrait painter, 215 
 Potiphar's wife, 220 
 Poultry bisexuality, 24 
 Predest. of aut. to career, 79, 
 
 80 
 Present soc. rules inadeq., 57 
 Prince Pansy, 151 
 Prodigy (muscular), 134 ff. 
 Professional life of author, 
 
 90 ff., 253, 255 
 Promise, and., 182, 235, 255 
 Prostitutes, 253 
 Provid. compens. aut., 58, 256 
 praised, 73, 113, 143 
 
 Prudery, 40, 61, 220, 228, 238, 
 
 245 256 
 murders, 149, 225, 227, 235, 
 
 245, 253 
 Pseudo-hermaphrodites, 21 
 Psyche, author's, 89 
 Psych, effem., degrees, 240 
 
 hermaphrodites, 19, 239 
 Psychop. individuality, 238 
 Public opinion guilty, 245 
 Publicity would remove a 
 
 world of woe, 197 
 Pug Heaven, 175 ff. 
 Pugilists' Haven, 171 ff . 
 Punishments for and., 144 
 Puritanism of and., 45, 106, 
 
 118, 249 
 Pussie (origin of name), 94 
 
 Q Apartments, 224 
 Q's murder, 3, 259 ff. 
 
 "Rabbit", 205 ff. 
 
 Race suicide, 49, 161, 196 
 
 "Ralph Werther", origin, 93, 
 
 94 
 Raphael, 33, 49, 93, 161 
 Rare find, 135 
 Rebellion, War of, 255 
 Recogn., mutual, of and., 158 
 Recogn. after 16 yrs., 255 
 Regimentals overpowering, 
 
 210 
 Rejec. from Chr. ministry, 80 
 Relat. ashamed prosec, 246 
 Religiosity of and., 43, 73, 143, 
 
 191 
 Religious prodigy, author was, 
 
 70, 73, 76, 77, 79, 143 
 Reporters, 248 
 Resourceful and., 176, 181 
 Reticence, sex, 167, 168, 222, 
 
 239, 245, 259 
 Reubs, 119 ff. 
 
 Rialto: See Fourteenth St. 
 RIDDLE OF UNDERWORLD, 
 
 4, 59, 98, 103, 114, 118, 
 
 123, 204 
 Robbers' vie. 200 times, 141 
 Robbery, 140, 173, 176, 230, 
 
294 
 
 Index. 
 
 232, 234, 256, 261 
 Rockies, 252, 253, 258 
 Roland Reeves, 150 ff., 158 ff., 
 
 164, 208 
 Ropes, 249 
 
 Sadder but wiser "Reub", 129 
 Sailors, 172 ff., 230, 240, 249 
 Saint Paul's sex teachings, 14 
 School days (author's), 63 82 
 Seance with a burglar, 139 
 Secret guest, 231 
 Segregation of and., 161 
 Sex bigotry: See Bigotry 
 
 doctrine of Bible, 13, 14, 15, 
 44, 73 
 
 domain ruled by bias, 163 
 
 expression in childhood, 54, 
 57, 59, 60, 61, 64, 78 
 
 fourth, 98 
 
 influences of childhood, 165 
 
 instinct's decline, 165 
 
 intensity, cause of, 78, 164, 
 165 
 
 scale, 22 
 Sexology tabooed: See Ret- 
 icence 
 Sexual insanity, 137 
 
 precocity, 64 
 
 the worst crippling, 2 
 Shakespeare-author, 34, 37, 38 
 
 problem, 35 
 Shame of and.'s rel., 245, 246 
 Shufeldt, Dr. R. W., 82, 89, 
 
 110, 266 
 Sikhs, 48 
 
 Simul. life as 3 persons, 92 
 Sing Sing, 196, 202 
 Skeleton of author, 84 
 Social elite, 265 
 Sociology, aut's contr., 96 
 Socrates, 28, 37, 161 
 Sodomites, 45, 146, 223, 238 
 Softness of and., 66, 84 ff., 254, 
 
 255 
 Soldiers, 11, 30, 31, 47, 79, 87, 
 104, 210, 226, 233, 255 ff. 
 "Soldiers' Friend", 89 
 Solut. of gyn. disapp., 156 
 
 Sons ("adopted"), 187, 214, 
 
 257, 258 
 Songs of fairie, 133, 269 
 Soprano voice of and., 267 
 Soul-mate of author (lifelong 
 
 in dreamland), 54 
 Spencer, Herbert, 14 
 Spermatorrhea, 83 
 Spiritual auto, of author, 73 
 "Squirrel", 207 
 
 Stamping grounds of and., 226 
 Stigmata of and., 19, 100, 151, 
 
 199, 231, 250, 255, 259, 
 
 264, 265, 267 
 Strangling of and., 232 ff., 
 
 237 ff., 242, 249 
 Struggling to save reason, 143 
 Stuyvesant Sq., 113, 130 ff. 
 Suetonius, 37 
 Suicide of and., viii, 1, 62, 68, 
 
 74, 195, 209, 237 ff., 251 ff., 
 
 254, 255, 260 
 Supermen 
 
 are and.? 37 
 Supreme man, 136, 145 
 
 woman, 212 
 Susa, 114 
 
 Talk of and., 153 ff. 
 Temperance only salv., 59 
 Tenderloin (Broadway), 104, 
 
 125, 226 
 Testicular secretion, 16, 149 
 Things not what seem, 119 
 Throwing act of and., 65, 67, 
 
 267 
 Tobacco, 152 
 "Tombs" (N. Y. City), 194 ff., 
 
 262 
 Tony Neddo, 186 ff., 193, 197 
 Torture of and., method, 244, 
 
 261. See also under Per- 
 secution. 
 Tracy, 126 ff. 
 
 Transform, not bargained, 173 
 
 Tremend. vir., 7, 107, 122, 221 
 
 attitute toward and., 172, 
 
 176, 186 ff., 201, 206, 221, 
 
 235, 253, 256 
 Trilogy (author's), 3 
 
Index. 
 
 295 
 
 Trusted murderer, 234 
 
 26th to 32d yrs. of aut., 89 ff. 
 
 Two handwritings, 95 
 
 Ulrichs, K. H., 38 
 Ultra-androgynous, 19 
 
 crim, court employee, 93 
 
 unexpected happens, 138 
 
 virile, 9 
 Underworld's sec. conn, aut., 5 
 Union Square, 226 
 University and., 103 ff., 118, 
 158, 180 
 
 author expelled from, 95 
 "Urning" term, 38 
 
 Value of erotic pleasure, 72 
 
 Village fairie, 71 
 
 Virile: See Tremend. v. & 
 
 ultra-v. 
 Virility confers bravery, 255 
 Visage aut. most marred, 144 
 Visit to Ft. Y in 1921, 255 
 Voice of author, 86, 111 
 
 Walt Whitman, 30, 36, 37, 255 
 War and and., 30, 32, 87, 255 
 Warning to and., 206 
 Whistling, 267 
 Wilde, Oscar, 18, 28, 49 
 Witch-burning, 41 
 
 Weapons a fetish, 224 
 
 Wee girl-boy's outlook, 62 
 
 "Werther", origin, 93 
 
 Why androgynes are hated, 45 
 
 an Underworld, 6 
 Wig, 202, 217, 265, 268 
 Wiles of and., 158, 181, 239, 
 
 240, 241, 251 
 Womanlike, author, 86, 87 
 Woman-man, the, 213 
 Woman-soul, 253 
 Woman's toil, bent, 227, 257, 
 
 268 
 World War, 255 
 Wyoming, 254 
 
 "X and wife", 158 
 X offenceless, 236 
 X's murder, 223 ff . 
 Xenophon, 29 
 
 Y offenceless, 236 
 
 Y's murder, 231 ff. 
 
 Yearning for feminine attire, 
 267. See also Cross-dress- 
 ing. 
 
 Z of and. physique, 250 
 
 Z's fate, aut's foretaste, 251 
 
 murder, 237 ff. 
 
 woman's apparel, 248