After suffering this nightmare a dozen times, I finally fell into a restful sleep lasting until early afternoon. ******* A typical night on the side streets: On Canal Street near Thompson was a pool parlor where acquaintances of the highest type for this period of my life—in large part adolescent drivers for the express companies — passed their evenings. While I was received in pool parlors of a lower grade, my presence would have been unwelcome here. One evening I was loafing in front of the place, waiting for some acquaintance to pass. Before long I was recognized, my presence announced to those within, and all temporarily interrupted their games to crowd around me. The majority had never: seen me be- fore, and were anxious to interview the person who was then the talk of the young " sports " of that part of the town, as well as of many other parts. Even in the foreign-laborer quarters of New York City, it is rare for a young man to run across a professional fairie—as they constitute as near as I can guess only one out of every three thousand physical males—and furthermore, I have been repeatedly told that I acted the part in such perfection as never seen in any other.
Question after question was addressed to me: How did I ever get it into my head that I was a girl? Why had I been born that way? Was it because my parents had indulged shortly before I was born, so that membrum virile concurreret meam faciem? Wasn't it because God wished to visit upon me some sin of my parents? (Practically all were more or less devout Roman Catholics.)
