would I never meet him! God forbid that! For to be all my life alone, year after year, striving to content myself with pleasant shadow instead of glowing verity!... Ah, I could well exclaim in the cry of Platen:
"O, weh Dir, der die Welt verachtet, allein zu sein Und dessen ganze Seele schmachtet allein zu sein!"
"One day a book came to my hand. It was a serious work, on abnormalisms in mankind: a book partly psychologic, partly medico-psychiatric; of the newest 'school'. It had much to say of homosexualism, of Uranianism. It considered and discussed especially researches by German physicians into it. It described myself, my secret, unrestful self, with an unsparing exactness! The writer was a famous specialistic physician in nervous diseases, abnormal conditions of the mind, and so on-an American. For the first time I understood that responsible physicians, great psychologists—profound students of humanities, high jurists, other men in the world besides obscene humourists of a club-room, and judges and
