Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/234

204 and songs were tacked to the fort bulletin boards in order that every one might have the opportunity to read them. Several times at the beginning of my visits to Ft. Y, I was received in the squad-rooms. Soldiers danced with me there, making believe I was their girl. I was otherwise their plaything, being paraded about on their shoulders or lying in a stretcher, being tossed up in a blanket, etc. I joined with them in base-ball and foot-ball, of course not in regular games, as I was as awkward as the average girl in these sports, being merely the buffoon of the game. Thus taking part in the pastimes of the soldiers was to me one of the highest pleasures of life.

Of course they always regarded me as a girl-boy weakling. Policy required that I always represent myself as a person of no talents except those of the fairie, and as a person occupying a humble station in life. Otherwise some of a vicious turn of mind would have followed me up with the purpose of blackmail, as was done in 1905, when the thirst for money suddenly put an end to my association with soldiers of one fort and almost occasioned my murder. Some quizzed me from time to time in order to ascertain whether I was worth following up, but I saved the situation through subterfuge. While they were ignorant that I belonged habitually to a high social stratum, I lost only trifling sums through robbery and blackmail.

They looked upon me as a rather remarkable individual. One of them told a policeman in my presence that I had been the talk of the fort for months. In a parade in which my soldier friends took part, I as spectator