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150 "I am undecided what to do with you, lock you up, or give you a thrashing, you d fairie!"

"Please let me go! I am very weak and can't stand

much. You want to punish me for being a fairie, but I can't help beng what Nature made me. Do you think any one would be a fairie from choice when they are the most despised of mankind? Think how much better God has been to you than to me.. Have pity on me! I am one of the most unfortunate of human beings! For your dear mother's sake—whom every boy must love —I beg you to show me mercy!"

An appeal to mother-love seldom failed. I return to the dance-hall and enter. My soldier friends are nowhere to be seen, so I take a seat among a group of blue-jackets of my own age, and am not slow in betraying my character through expressions of my admiration. A room is hired.

It was after three a.m. when I sought rest. But my brain was so excited that I tossed about for two hours, having alternately chills for five minutes, and then fever. I felt that I was going to lose my mind any moment, and besought the Omniscient to allay my excitement.. I had gone beyond my strength, and in addition the excessive venery was harmful to the nervous system. After five o'clock, I repeatedly fell into a doze, but immediately beginning to dream that my face and buccal cavity were covered with the most loathsome syphilitic ulcers—such as a university confidant had once told me he had seen in a hospital, falsely, in order to scare me from fellatio with strangers—I would awake with a start, horror-stricken.