keep up a most eloquent love-correspondence with the singer, under a female name. He wrote in his diary. "Only once, once, to be kissed by those cherry red lips, to be clasped in those strong arms, to be allowed to rest on that marble-hard bosom! what unspeakable bliss it must be … He sings heroic roles and he is himself a hero. Oh, my Conte di Luna! why are you so unattainable, as far out of my reach as your name-sake? Have you no idea that I love you,—you, my only beloved until death?" The reader perhaps may fancy that one meets here the sentimentalism of a feeble-framed, morbid-natured lad. Not so, for the diarist was a rugged young Uranian, who grew up to be a marine-officer of distinction and is to day a virile type of humanity. But his inborn uranianism is intense, under the mask.
University Life
and Uranianism.
Though the Uranian busy in college-life is not in earliest youth, yet he is not mature enough to make consideration of his temperament impertinent to this chapter. Universities, the world around, are centers of similisexual attraction and of 'relations' between fine-natured young college-men. Under such sexual circumstances often begin those absorbing and exclusive intimacies for life, not much understood as more than long and remarkable "friendships". The influence of hellenic and Latin literature and classic social aspects, the virile daily ambient, athletics as a great element of modern university life,—all promote the sentiment, are an element of the problem. Oxford and Cambridge, Heidelberg and Jena, Harvard and Princeton, Vienna and Berlin, Bologna and Padua, the chronicles of their homosexualism between the young men populating them give much significance to this phase.
College-Theatri-
cals and Youthful
Similisexuality:
Instance.
The homosexual influences of certain kinds of university theatricals, nowadays so popular and artistic, are not trivial, especially
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