Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/224

196 But, as you see, Ralph, it turned my hair white. Fortunately it has not rendered me bald or wrinkled.

And the judge's charge was so absurd: "The crime of which you, Frank White, have been convicted, is of such a disgusting character that it can not even be defined!"

To think of relegating an individual to state's prison on a charge that no one comprehended; that no one had ever been permitted even to investigate—because the subject is beyond investigation, no intellectual even being willing to define it!

The judge said: "It is as heinous as murder, because it strikes at the very existence of the race! No one but a criminal of the deepest dye could descend to it! Frank White, you have been convicted of the awful felony of race suicide!"Unreason and prejudice! There was hardly an individual within the hearing of the judge who had not been guilty of race suicide, though in a different way from my own! And they for the most part deliberately, whereas I was compelled by Mother Nature. They imprisoned me for what they conceded to themselves: Following Nature's behests other than solely for the perpetuation of the race!

And then the day following my sentence, in the yard of the Tombs jail, being thrust into an ironbarred bus along with a score of hardened male criminals—just as if I were myself a male!—to be driven to the Grand Central to board a train for Sing Sing. I, the goody-goody girlboy, having evolved into a felon!

But my prosecution by self-righteous Christians for what were really offences against no one—simply to satiate these Christians' thirst for tormenting