sexual. The latter had treated the other man's passion with indifference then coquetry, then cruel mockery and finally with an almost brutal contempt—making sport of his admirer's unattractive looks, his age and his individuality in general; and reading his letters to a third homosexual who made the situation common gossip in similisexual cliques. In the city of New York, several years ago, the suicide of a well-known and successful business-man, conducting a fashionable establishment, with various European, branches, referred positively to his relationships with young man, between whom and himself there had come about a formally adoptive connection. The matter was hushed up assiduously. Its details were umnistakeably homosexual—and intensely passional.
Here is an example of a double suicide, because of the mere passion of a coming separation:
"In Werden, three days ago, occurred a painful "double-suicide." Two young men of the town, of humble life but thoroughly respectable and apparently in comfortable stations as employés in the city mentioned, have been somewhat noted in the place for their closely affectionate friendship. The elder was a certain Albert W—, the younger H— G—, and both were in good health. Recently young Albert W— received a proposal to betake himself to a distant city, to remain indefinitely. Since this matter came up, the two friends have been increasingly unhappy. Last Sunday, after a long walk together, in which they met with several of their acquaintances and rather to the surprise of these remarked that they had seen their way to leaving the place together, they returned to the modest room of young W—, being already dressed in their best clothes; and—as it would seem—when clasped tight in each other's arms, lying on the neat bed, fired simultaneously two fatal shots, each with a revolver. They had already inserted a notice in a newspaper taking a farewell of their friends. The real, motive for the tragedy is not clear."
The mutual suicides, in the artillery-barracks at Laibach, in February, 1909, of two young under-officers, Adolf Waldeck and his friend Kogei, had a strong accent of homosexualism. Such affairs are far from rare in military or civilian life.
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