Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/143

Rh and ran away. I pray you, have mercy on me, and let me go. If you knew what a sad life I have had, you would feel sorry for me. I have felt like committing suicide a thousand times. I am not willingly what I am. It is my misfortune and not my fault that I am an urning. If you are ever capable of compassion, let my fate move you to pity. Please let me go and don't arrest me!"

The soldiers soon went on their way, and the constable conducted me in the direction of the lockup. He acted toward me as if I was a low criminal, while I continued to supplicate him to let me go. As we came nearer the lockup, in my highly excited condition over the fear of disgracing my family, who lived only four miles away, and the prospect that if my secret was disclosed, I could never see any of my loved ones again, I thoughtlessly declared I would not go any farther, which caused him to rap my head with his club.

I was locked up for the night. Through nervous shock, I did not sleep a wink. Only to the few is it given ever to taste such a night of misery as I passed. "I, whom all think the purest and most pious of men, being arrested!" I meditated. "I, the last one whom anybody would have expected ever to be arrested! But God's will be done. . . . Am I to be the one to disgrace my family? Hitherto I have been the scholar, the litterateur, the only collegian of my father's family, and have by my achievements in learning brought the most honor on my father's house of all his children. I shall also be the one to bring the deepest disgrace upon it."