“I have never found a satisfactory object of my affections, and my happiness, perhaps my health, have been seriously injured.  At my public school a master helped me to a truer understanding of these things.  The merely animal sodomy which exists in many public schools was unknown.  What I learned of sex I learned for myself.  I am recommended to turn my aspirations to the abstract universal maid; but so far at least I cannot do it.

“Male Greek statuary and the Phoedrus of Plato have had a great, though only confirmatory, influence on my feelings.  My ideal is that of Theocritus XIII, wherein Hercules was bringing Hylas to the perfect measure of a man.  My first thought is the good of my friend, but, except for the good subjective influence of passion, I have failed utterly.

“I am very tall, dark, rather strong, fond of games, though I do not excel, owing to short sight.  I am English, though I have French blood, which may account for an unreservedly passionate disposition.  Though unlike other people, I am not in the least feminine, nor has anyone thought so to my knowledge.  I can whistle easily and well.  I am so masculine that I cannot even conceive of passive sexual pleasure in women, much less in men.  (That is one of the difficulties in boy-love.) My affections are inextricably bound up in the ideals of protection of one weaker than myself.  In the earlier days, when sexuality was less conscious, this was a great source of romantic feeling, the glamour of which is rather departing.  I cannot understand love of adult males, much less if they are of lower class, and the idea of prostitution is nauseous to me.

“I think I may say that I have the esthetic and moral sense very strongly ingrained.  Indeed, they are largely synonymous with me.  I have no dramatic aptitude, and, though I flatter myself that my taste is good in music, I have no knowledge of music.  If I have a favorite color, it is a dark crimson or blue, of the nature of old stained glass.  I derive great pleasure from all literary and pictorial art and architecture; indeed, art of all kinds.  I have facility in writing personal lyrical verse; it affords me relief.

“I think my inversion must be congenital, as the desire of contact with those boys I loved began before masturbation and has lasted through private and public resorts and into university life.  The other sex does not attract me, but I am very fond of children, girls as well as boys. (If there is sexuality in this, which I trust there is not, it is latent).”

This statement is of interest because it may well lead us to suppose that the writer, who is of balanced mind and sound judgment, possesses a confirmed homosexual outlook on life.  While, however, it is the rule for the permanent direction of the sexual impulse to be decided by the age of 20, that age is too early to permit us to speak