Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/104

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How I Came to Be a Female-Impersonator.


IV. I Grow into The Fairie Boy.

At sixteen, I entered a college in New York City. I alone was responsible for the scene of my university training. I had frequently visited New York and wished to reside there. But I had then no intention of ever yielding to my detested instincts for female-impersonation. I had not realized that residence in a great city would make temptation far stronger than in a village. My being fated to make my home in New York almost throughout my adulthood has had a tremendous influence on my life, particularly from nineteen to thirty-one.

My father gave me every educational advantage because in the fairly large "prep" that I attended from my tenth to sixteenth years, I attained the highest scholarship in the history of the school. In an address to the students, the principal named me as the youthful scholar to be patterned after by the other boys (!!!).

I know I shall be accused of exaggerated ego for the way I talk about myself in this and the next chapter. But seven articles have been published about myself in medical journals, exclusive of numerous reviews of my Autobiography of an Androgyne. How many people can go into a library, call for magazines, and gaze at pictures of themselves within their covers? How many people have had a three-volume autobiography published? With such a record, I suspect that I am either insane or else one of the half-dozen most