Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/282

248 in many ways so much guilelessness and lack of worldly wi:dom as to make it impossible to believe that this moral austerity could be merely a mask of deep-dyed hypocrisy. It is, in fact, difficult to associate with him without being convinced of his deep religious feeling. Going to church appears to be indeed one of the chief joys of his life. Because it would keep him from the church service, I have even known him to decline an invitation to dinner from an old friend whom he had not seen for several years and to whom he was under great obligations. In fact I have myself come to regard attendance at church services on Sunday as inevitable a feature of my visits to the author's home as it is of my visits to my parents, these being in fact the only occasions on which I attend church.

My characterization of the author's personal appearance would be as mild and ovine (that is, sheeplike). A young lady co-laborer of his in the office said on one occasion when some of us men had been teasing him that he looked "like a frightened bunny." Most persons would probably set him down as somewhat lacking in the more forceful, virile quality. He conveys the impression, as it were, of always being on the point of apologizing for the fact that he exists.

He proved to be an admirable subject for teasing, and some of us at the office got as much fun out of teasing him as we would from teasing and playing tricks on our girl friends, and his reaction to it was essentially feminine—a sort of pleased childlike pride at being the object of attention.