Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/133

Rh the androgyne is amenable to the law—they finally decided to let me go if I ran away from the neighborhood as fast as my legs would carry me. The three of them escorted me to the mouth of the alley, and the last words I caught were: " Run faster! Run faster!"

While in college I shrunk from the required gymnasium exercises. I felt that they were proper for young men, but my feminine nature made me exceedingly shy while in line in the drill. In the gymnasium dressing-room I would enjoy seeing the naked forms, but concealed my own. If military drill had been required, as is the case in some universities in 1918, it would have caused me to omit a university education.

Beginning about this time, my twenty-first year, and continuing down to the date when this book goes to press, I have commonly worn in my home an ornamental bathrobe, just like a woman's dress. Clad in it, I have gazed at my reflection in the mirror, imagining I was a woman. Walking in it to and fro and up and down the stairs, I have taken pleasure in hearing it rustle like a woman's dress, in feeling it strike against my legs, and in holding it up when ascending the stairs, as a woman her skirts. In my college days, while home for week-ends, I would occasionally, when alone, put on a sister's hat and gaze at myself in the mirror with rare pleasure, wishing that I might wear that style of hat.

In this summer of 1894, when away from New York, where temptation was less strong, I became for several weeks weaned away from my peculiar habits. In my