Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/176

 " incident of. the sort. It was such only in a relative sense; there had been two or three mates of mine at school that, if homosexual permanently or not so, were then on the usual "schoolboy" terms of physical intimacy with me. With one of them, a brother of the handsome G— mentioned, I was accustomed to masturbate chiefly because he looked so much like his relative. He could stir up all sort of romantic thoughts in me. This was my real reason for caring for it with him, rather than some others … I have forgotten to mention an incident when I was not more than seven or eight, that has always appeared to me striking, as hinting that "we are born so Several older people were once talking, in my presence about a neighbour's young son who had committed suicide because of his rejection by a young lady of the vicinity. There was a pause, and I, whom nobody had thought of as attending, exclaimed. "What a fool! To kill himself for love of a girl!" There was a general burst of surprise and annoyance at my being so near. But soon somebody asked—"For what sort of other love, T—, do you think a young man should kill himself?" Without an instant's hesitation I answered, "Because he loved some man who hated him! That would be good reason, I think!" At this notion the company smiled, and made some fun of its romantic suggestion. The observation passed, without reflections as to what sort of a nature might be shaping in my stout little frame … I remember to have had no other "sexual convictions" in my life. The instinct was inborn—I could never have got it from any outside source, so rooted it was it in me from my first youth." …

Two types of Uranian boyhood prevail. The child being in this the father of the man, as in other foreshadowings. One is the physically delicate youth, graceful, spiritual, and dreamy, highly impressionable. To this type also belong often detail of