Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/46

16, a lady of forty who did not know my age remarked of me: "Why he is only a boy!" When I was forty-two, a business associate of rather long-standing and only twenty-six years of age remarked that he had "never met any one else so abnormal as [myself] in respect to the discrepancy between apparent and actual age." I have sometimes thought of myself as "the boy who never grew to be a man." Before reaching my fortieth year, it was my ambition to preserve my youth indefinitely. In my middle forties business associates have asked me for the recipe for perennial youth. Before reaching my fortieth year, possibly no other male was so horrified as myself at the thought of waning youth and approaching old age. But now (1918), in my middle forties, I am reconciled to growing old.

I am rather vain, and have been guilty of contemplating my reflection in a mirror. Prior to my middle forties I was of a bashful disposition and lacked self-confidence, except when following out my fairie instincts. Down to my middle forties I have been unusually fond of small animals as pets and have covered their coats with kisses. I likewise am unusually fond of petting children.

I am devoid of practically all interest in sport. In place of this interest, I happen to be an æsthete. My home is an art gallery, with more art objects per cubic foot than I have heard to exist anywhere else outside an art gallery or shop. Few are better endowed than myself in respect to the capacity for deriving pleasure from beauty in art and nature.