Feminine beauty he perceives objectively, as he would any design of flowing curves and delicate coloring, but it has no sexual charm for him whatever.  Women have put themselves in his way repeatedly, but he finds himself more and more irritated by their specifically feminine foibles.  With men generally he is much more patient and sympathetic.

The first literature that appealed to him was Plato’s dialogues, first read at 20 years of age.  Until then he had not known but what he stood alone in his peculiarity.  He read what he could of classic literature.  He enjoys Pater, appreciating his attitude toward his own sex.  Four or five years, later he came across Raffalovich’s book, and ever since has felt a real debt of gratitude to its author.

M.O. has no wish to injure society at large.  As an individual he holds that he has the same right to be himself that anyone else has.  He thinks that while boys of from 13 to 15 might possibly be rendered inverts, those who reach 16 without it cannot be bent that way.  They may be devoted to an invert enough in other ways to yield him what he wishes sexually, but they will remain essentially normal themselves.  His observations are based on about 30 homosexual relationships that have lasted various lengths of time.

    M.O. feels strongly the poetic and elevated character of his
    principal homosexual relationships, but he shrinks from appearing
    too sentimental.

    With regard to the traces of feminism in inverts he writes:—­

“Up to the age of 11 I associated much with a cousin five years older (the one referred to above) and took great delight in a game we often played, in which I was a girl,—­a never-ending romance, a non-sexual love story.

“Somewhat later and until puberty, I took great delight in acting, but generally took female roles, wearing skirts, shawls, beads, wigs, head-dresses.  When I was about 13 my family began to make fun of me for it.  I played secretly for a while, and then the desire for it left, never to return.

    “There still lingers, however, a minor interest, which began
    before puberty, in valentines.  My feeling for them is much like
    my feeling for flowers.

“Before I reached puberty I was sometimes called a ‘sissy’ by my father.  Such taunts humiliated me more than anything else has ever done.  After puberty my father no longer applied the term, and gradually other persons ceased to tease me that way.  The sting of it lasted, though, and led me more than once to ask intimate friends, both men and women, if they considered me at all feminine.  Every one of them has been very emphatically of the opinion that my rational life is distinctively masculine, being logical, impartial, skeptical.  One or two have suggested that I have a finer discrimination than most men, and that I take care of my rooms somewhat as a