Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/207

Rh. On the eve of a female-impersonation spree during this period, I always felt like a soldier on entering a great battle from which he realized he might never come back alive, or like a murderer on the eve of his electrocution. On such occasions I habitually sang to myself:

"Why oh why should we be melancholy, boys, Whose business 'tis to die?"

Just before leaving my residence, I always knelt and prayed the Heavenly Father to bring me back safe, and on my return likewise my first act was to thank Him for it. Arrived in New York, my melancholy and dread would almost entirely disappear, and in their place a sense of gladness would spring up that in the great metropolis I was lost to all who knew me. I was in the habit of putting up at a third-class hotel in a poor quarter of the city, registering under an assumed name. About eight in the evening, I would retire to my room, remove my outer clothing, conceal my valuables, dress myself in a rather shabby suit, and saunter forth, hurrying past hotel employees say that they would not observe my change of apparel. Reaching the Bowery or some other street among those named in the account of my "low-class fairie" period, I would experience a feeling of exultation at finding myself again on Jennie June's stamping ground. [I had left behind all my masculinity, such as it was. The feminine in me, suppressed for two weeks, now held sway. My first care was to hide a reserve fund in a small black box on a ledge of the old market on the site of the present Police Headquarters on Centre Street.