Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/145

Rh were the more inclined to respect my disinclination to refer to my every-day life.

To the university circle I thus continued the "innocent" from whose view Heaven had mercifully shut off the seamy side of life, particularly the Underworld. They declared they never saw any one with such weak sexuality! But I actually knew a thousand times as much about passion and crime as any one of them. Some complained because I "never associated with men and learned human nature"! But I secretly knew human nature far better than any of them. They thought that my feminine predilections and lack of worldly wisdom (seeming) were due to my being a recluse! And I was a recluse so far as concerned university social affairs. For I elected to take my diversions as a mademoiselle—not as a gallant.


 * I have picked out for description that one of my numerous evenings spent in part with him which best illustrates his character and our relations. Afternoons and evenings he hung around fashionable hotel lobbies and exhibition halls to scrape acquaintance with moderately wealthy and sportily inclined Reubs making their first trip to New York. With his unmatched geniality and hypocrisy, he was decidedly successful in getting a line aboard some "sport" from upstate, and taking him in tow. For with Buddie, it was "Brother, this" and "Brother, that". A large proportion of the Reubs whom Buddie condescended to buttonhole congratulated themselves doubtless on their good luck in happening on such a friendly New Yorker—a gentleman of leisure and a big roll of yellow backs (which Buddie always took pains to wave before the eyes of Reubs, a manoeuvre