He is exclusively passive; also likes mutual _fellatio_. He used
greatly to admire finely developed forms (conscious of his own
shortcomings), shapely limbs, and delicate brown hair, and always
admired strength and manly vigor. He never took any interest in
boys, and has always been indifferent to women.


HISTORY XXIV.--A medical man, English, aged 30. He believes that
his father, who was a magistrate, was very sympathetic toward
men; on several occasions he has sat with him on the bench when
cases of indecent assault were brought up; he discharged three
cases, although there could be little doubt as to their guilt,
and was very lenient to the others.

From the age of 9 he loved to sleep with his brother, ten years
older, who was in the navy; they slept in different beds, and the
child went to bed early, but he always kept awake to see his
brother undress, as he adored his naked body; and would then get
into his bed. He learned the habit of masturbation from his
brother at the age of 9; at that time there was no sexual orgasm,
but watching it in his brother was a perpetual source of wonder
and pleasure. During his brother's absence at sea the boy longed
for his return and would practice self-abuse with the thought of
his brother's naked body before him. This brother's death was a
source of great grief. At the age of 12 he went to
boarding-school and was constantly falling in love with
good-looking boys. He was always taken into one of the bigger
boys' beds. At this age he was thoroughly able to enjoy the
sexual orgasm with boys. His erotic dreams have always been of
men and especially of boys; he has never dreamed sexually of
women. From the age of 9 to the age of 21, when he left school,
he never gave women a thought sexually, though he always liked
their society. For two years after leaving school he had
connection with women, not because he thought there was sin in
loving his own sex, but because he regarded it as a thing that no
one did after leaving school. During these two years he still
really preferred men and used to admire the figures of soldiers
and sailors. He then paid a visit to London, which may be
described in his own words: "I went to see an old schoolfellow
who was living there. In his room was a young fellow, fair,
extremely good looking, with a good figure and charming manners.
From that moment all my past recollections came back. I could not
get him out of my mind; in fact, I was in love with him. I
pictured him naked before me as a lovely statue; my dreams were
frequent at night, always of him. For a fortnight afterward I
practised masturbation with the picture of his lovely face and
form always before me. We became fast friends, and from that day
women have never entered my thoughts."

Although up to the present he has no wish or intention to marry,
he believes that he will eventually do so, because it is thought
desirable in his profession; but he is quite sure that his love
and affection for men and boys will never lessen.

In earlier life he preferred men from 20 to 35; now he likes boys
from 16 upward; grooms, for instance, who must be good looking,
well developed, cleanly, and of a lovable, unchanging nature; but
he would prefer gentlemen. He does not care for mere mutual
embracing and reciprocal masturbation; when he really loves a man
he desires _pedicatio_ in which he is himself the passive
subject.

He has curly hair and moustache, and well-developed sexual
organs. His habits are masculine; he has always enjoyed field
sports, and can swim, ride, drive, and skate. At the same time,
he is devoted to music, can draw and paint, and is an ardent
admirer of male statuary. While fond of practical occupations of
every sort, he dislikes anything that is theoretical.

He adds: "As a medical man, I fail to see morally any
unhealthiness, or anything that nature should be ashamed of, in
connection with, and sympathy for, men."


HISTORY XXV.--A.S. Schoolmaster, aged 46.

"My father was, I should say, below the average in capacity for
friendship. He liked young girls, and was never interested in
boys. He was a man of strongly Puritanical morality, capable of
condemning with gloomy bitterness. He was also a man capable of
great sacrifice for principle, and mentally very well endowed. My
mother was a clever, practical woman, with wide sympathies. She
was capable of warm friendship, especially toward those younger
than herself. Her father (whom I never saw) was a teacher. He was
devoted to his wife, but also delighted in the company of young
men. He had always some young man on his arm, my mother would
tell me. My mother's family is of Welsh descent. I learned to
read at 5, and I can scarcely have been more than 6 when I used
to read again and again David's lament for Absalom. Even now I
can dimly recall the siren charm for me of that melancholy
refrain, 'O my son Absalom.... O Absalom, my son, my son!' Of
late, when I have thought of the amount of devotion I have shown
to lads, and the amount I have sometimes suffered for them, I
have felt as if there were something almost weirdly prophetic in
that early incident.

"I was always an impressionable creature. My mother was very
musical, and her singing 'got hold' of me wonderfully. The
dramatic and the poetic always strongly appealed to me.

"I felt I should like to act; but I never dared. In the same way
I felt that one day I should like to be a schoolmaster, but I
dared not say so. A shy, retiring creature was obviously unfitted
for such occupations. Well, the teaching came about, and the
strange part was that the boys were somehow or other attracted
by me, and the 'worst' customers were attracted most. And there
came a chance of acting too. Owing to some difficulties about the
cast in a play at school, I took a part. After that I _knew_ that
(within a certain range) I could act. I spent two holidays with a
dramatic company. I should undoubtedly have remained on the
stage, but for one thing. I don't wish to be sanctimonious, but
dirty and ugly jokes are odious to me. It was this sort of thing
that drove me away. I threw myself into the school work instead.

"It was partly the dramatic interest, partly a quite genuine
interest in human nature, that led me to do some preaching too.
When I had been badly hurt by one or two youngsters whom I loved,
I thought of going in for pastoral work, but this too was given
up--and very wisely. I should never be able to work comfortably
with any organization. For one thing I have a way of taking on
new ideas, and organizations do not like that. For another, all
social functions are anathema to me.

"Interest in 'art' as usually understood began to be marked only
after I was 30. It started with architecture and passed on to
painting and sculpture. The tendency to do rather a variety (too
great a variety) of things characterizes many uranians. We are
rather like the labile chemical compounds: our molecules readily
rearrange themselves.

"As a boy of 10 I had the ordinary sweethearting with a girl of
the same age. The incident is worth perhaps a little further
comment for the following reason: When I was 16 years old the
girl lived with us for a year. She was a nice, pleasant, bright
girl, and she thought a great deal of me. I was strongly
attracted by her. I remember especially one little incident. I
had been showing her how to do some algebra and she was kneeling
at the table by the side of my chair. Her hair was flowing over
her shoulders and she looked rather charming. She expressed warm
admiration of the way I had worked the problem out. I remember
that I deliberately squashed out the feeling of attraction that
came over me. I scarcely know why I did this; but I fancy there
was a vague sense that I did not want my work disturbed. There
was no sexual attraction or, at least, none that was manifest.
The girl, there is no doubt, grew to love me. I am sorry to say
that in two other cases, later, women loved me, and have both
permanently remained unmarried on my account. I sometimes feel
that in a wisely free society I should be able to give both of
these women children. That I believe I could do, and I think it
would be an immense satisfaction to them. A permanent union with
a woman would, however, be impossible to me. A permanent union
with a man would, I believe, be possible. At least I know that
attractions which have been at all homosexual in character have
in my case been very lasting.

"I was strongly attracted when not more than 13 to a lad slightly
older. It was a love story, there is no doubt, but I do not
recollect any outer sexual signs. There were other passing cases,
but in no case was there any warm response till I was 15. I then
made friends with a lad of entirely different type from myself. I
was a reader. I liked long walks and fresh air, but I was too shy
to go in for sports. Indeed I was frightfully shy. He was a great
sportsman and always at home in society. But he asked me to help
him with some work, and we took to working together. I grew
passionately fond of him. His caresses always caused some
erection. Personally, I believe it would have been wiser to have
obtained complete sexual expression. The absence of knowledge led
to two distinctly undesirable results. The first was marked
congestion and pain at times; the second was a tendency to a sort
of modified masochism. There is always, I suppose, some erotic
attraction about the buttocks, and of course also, to boys, they
afford an irresistibly attractive mark for a good smack. I found
that when this lad spanked me it produced some amount of sexual
excitement, and the desire for this form of stimulus grew upon
me. The result, in my case, was bad. It was sensualism, not love.
I can say this with confidence, because in a much later case of
deeply passionate love, I shrank from any such method, but the
mutual, naked embrace I found was for me an absolutely natural
and _pure_ expression of love. I never felt any touch of
grossness in it, and it destroyed the earlier and (for me at
least) less wholesome desire.

"The school friendship disappeared with the marriage of my
friend. I was furiously jealous, and the young man's mother was
opposed to me, but I still think of that early friendship with
tenderness. I know that my boy friend was the first who made me
capable of self-expression, the first who taught me how to make
friends at all. And if he still cared for me, I know that his
love would be dear to me still.

"My chief regret, as I look back, is that I did not know about
these things early. I cannot but think that all youngsters should
be spoken to about the love of comrades and encouraged to seek
help in any sort of trouble that this may bring. We homogenic
folk may be but a small percentage of mankind, but our numbers
are still great, and surely the making or marring of our lives
should count for something. At college I fell violently in love
with a friend with whom I did work in science. He loved me too,
though not with such heat. He also was largely uranian, but this
I only realized a year or two back. He remains unmarried, and is
still my friend. We did some research work together which is
pretty well known. I am quite sure that the love we had for each
other gave tremendous zest to our work and greatly increased our
powers.

"While I was working at college I was interested in a lad who was
working as errand boy for a city firm. I helped him to get better
training, and spent money on him. My father was making me some
allowance at the time and demurred. I said I would in future
support myself, and in this way came to take up schoolmastering.
I at once became quite absorbed in my work with the boys. Of
course I loved them. And here I feel I must touch upon what seems
to me a characteristic of most of us uranians. Our genital organs
are with us ordinarily and usually organs of _expression_. The
clean-minded heterogenic man is apt to look upon such a view of
the genital organs as monstrous; we, on the other hand, are
compelled (at least for ourselves) to regard it as the natural
and pure one. For my own part I had many Puritan
prejudices--prejudices that I retained for many a long and weary
day--but my affection for those of my own sex so often expressed
itself by some sexual stirring, and more or less erection, that I
was _obliged_ to look upon this as inevitable, and in general I
paid no attention to it whatever. It was the older boys' who
sometimes attracted me strongly. My love for them was I know a
genuinely spiritual thing, though inevitably having some physical
expression. I was capable of great devotion to them and sacrifice
for them, and I would certainly rather have died than have
injured them. The boys got on well with me. I was never weak with
them, and I was able to allow all kinds of familiarities without
any loss of respect. The older boys usually, out of class, called
me by my Christian name, and I remember one writing to ask me
whether he might do so, as it made him feel 'nearer' to me. A few
of the lads I of course loved with special devotion. They kissed
me and loved to have me embrace them. One of these was, I now
know, pure uranian, and there was in his case certainly some
sexual response, but though I often slept with him, when he was a
lad of 17 and 18, there was never any idea in our minds of any
sexual act. We are still warm friends, and always kiss when we
meet. Looking back upon those days, I feel that I was a little
inclined to pass on from one love to another, but each was a
genuine devotion, and involved real hard work on the lad's
behalf. And I know that where the lad stuck to me into manhood a
real tenderness and love remain still.

"While teaching I made the acquaintance of a non-conformist
minister, who, though happily married, had certainly some
homogenic tendencies. He was most devoted to boys and helped me
with regard to some difficult cases. It was the difficult cases
that always attracted me. I had to punish these lads and my
friend recommended spanking with the hand on the bare buttocks. I
mention that I adopted this method, because it might have been
thought specially dangerous to me. It certainly never produced in
me the remotest suggestion of any sexual act, though it did
sometimes produce a slight amount of sexual excitement. I
disregarded this, or put it out of my mind, as I found the method
most efficacious. It was capable of great variation of intensity,
and the boys were always ready to joke about it. I never came
across a case where any sexual excitement was produced by it. The
boys whom I had to be most 'down' on almost always, however, grew
fonder of me. There may be a slight and normal masochistic
tendency in most boys, and _perhaps_ the erogenic character of
the buttocks has something to do with the development of
affection. If so, I am inclined to regard it as normal and useful
rather than otherwise, for in my experience no undesirable result
was ever produced. But then, of course, there was no playing with
the business; that might, I am sure, in some cases be decidedly
injurious.

"One experience of my schoolmastering days is, I think, important
in its bearing upon general sexual psychology. I always noticed
that during the term I was specially free from 'wet dreams.' What
is noteworthy is this: During term there was never anything more
than a very partial sexual expression of any feeling of mine,
such expression indeed as was wholly inevitable. There was
therefore no actual loss of semen, and it seems clear that the
'wet dreams' were not due to mere physical pressure. The psychic
satisfaction of love in this case made the complete physical
expression less urgent. But it was a love of a distinctly tender
kind that was needed to keep the physical from obtruding. Of that
further experience has made me sure. I am, moreover, now
convinced that a _mutual_ uranian love will reach its best
results, both spiritual and physical, where there is complete
sexual expression.

"Of the character of the sexual dreams I have had, there is not
much to be said. During the period of masochistic tendency, they
were masochistic in character; otherwise they have been dreams
simply of the naked embrace. Usually there has been a
considerable element of ideal love in the dream. I have not more
than three times at most dreamed of intercourse with one of the
opposite sex. There was only in one case anything that I could
call actual emotion in such a dream. The other dreams have often
(not always) been dreams of real yearning, and not at all what I
should call merely sensual.

"In the course of time I wanted more freedom to do things in my
own way than could be obtained in a public school. I started a
school of my own. The work was for a good many years very happy.
I loved the boys, and they loved me. I was active, ardent, and
they made a chum of me. But people got into the way of sending me
awkward customers. I poured out my love on these, I used myself
up for them. Unfortunately (though I was never 'orthodox') my
Puritanical morality was still strong within me, my views of
human psychology were too limited, and I imposed them on the
boys. Some were very devoted; but, as years went by and the
proportion of _mauvais sujets_ increased, there tended to be a
split in the small camp and one or two boys whom I loved deceived
me terribly. To a man of my temperament this was heart-rending
and from then the work was doomed. Troubles at school went along
with troubles at home, and these things contributed to center my
affection upon a lad who was with me, and who had given me much
trouble. For some reason or other I went on believing that he
would get right. Deceit was his great difficulty. He was
certainly partly homosexual himself. Looking back I can see that
with a wider and more charitable knowledge I could have dealt
more wisely and helpfully with certain homosexual episodes of
his. I am convinced now that mere sweeping condemnation of the
physical is not the wholesome way of help. However, to cut the
story short, all seemed at last to go well, and the lad was
growing into a young man. Our love deepened, and we always slept
together, but quite ascetically. Later, when quite in his young
manhood he had left school, there was, unfortunately,
misunderstandings with his parents, who forbad him to sleep with
me. What followed is of some importance. Up till then, though
certainly his affection seemed ardent, I had observed no sexual
signs on his part. I had been quite frank with him as to mine. He
was then 19, and I thought old enough to have things explained to
him. Sleeping with him I had found peaceful and helpful, and more
than once he told me that it greatly helped him. But _after we
were forbidden to sleep together_, I found the passion in me more
difficult to control, and it suddenly leaped out in him. We were
still, however, rather ascetic, though we used to kiss each
other, and we used to embrace naked. This produced emission not
infrequently with me, but only once with him, though always
powerful erection. I would not allow any friction. Perhaps this
was a mistake. A more complete expression might have helped him.

"All my life I had been hungry for a complete response, and at
one time the lad thought he could give it. He was then nearing
20. 'I have never been so happy in my life,' he said. It was a
blow to me when I found he had mistaken his own feelings, but I
was quite ready to accept what love he could give. I also never
dreamed of any sort of insistence on sexual expression. With such
love as he could give I was quite ready to make myself content.
'The true measure of love,' wrote a uranian schoolmaster to me
once, 'is self-sacrifice'; not 'What will you give?' but 'What
will you give up?' Not 'What will you do for him?' but 'What will
you forego for his sake?' I quote this gladly, for the
conventional English moralists regard an invert as a kind of
deformed beast. I can only say that I tried to realize the ideal
which these words express. No 'moralist' would have helped me one
whit. The parents, also, separated us. They have done much harm
by their mistake. How difficult it is for parents to allow
freedom to their children! Their ideal is successful constraint,
not free self-discovery. But in spite of them, and in spite of
the separation, I know that my friend and I have helped each
other.

"There is one fear parents have which I believe is unwarranted.
As far as I have seen, I do not conclude that the early
expression of homosexual love prevents heterosexual love from
developing later. Where this love is a part of the individual's
inborn nature, it will show itself. I do, however, believe that a
noble homogenic love in early life will sometimes help a lad to
avoid a low standard of heterogenic attachment. The Greeks did
well, at their best time, in cultivating and ennobling the
homogenic love. Amongst us, as can be understood by all who know
the working of society taboos, it is the baser forms that are
unhindered, the noblest forms that are debased.

"We urnings are, I think, dependent upon individual love. Many of
us, I know, need to work for an individual to do our best. Is
this the outcome of the woman in the uranian temperament? And the
tragedy of our fate is that we whose souls vibrate only to the
touch of the hand of Eros are faced with the fiercest taboo of
all that can give our lives meaning. The other taboos have been
given up one by one. Will not this, the last of the taboos, soon
vanish? I have known lives darkened by it, weakened by it,
crushed out by it. How long are the western moralists to maim and
brand and persecute where they do not understand?"

The next case belongs to a totally different class from all the preceding
histories. These--all British or American--were obtained privately; they
are not the inmates of prisons or of asylums, and in most cases they have
never consulted a physician concerning their abnormal instincts. They pass
through life as ordinary, sometimes as honored, members of society. The
following case, which happens to be that of an American, is acquainted
with both the prison and the lunatic asylum. There are several points of
interest in his history, and he illustrates the way in which sexual
inversion can become a matter of medico-legal importance. I think,
however, that I am justified in believing that the proportion of sexually
inverted persons who reach the police-court or the lunatic asylum is not
much larger in proportion to the number of sexually inverted persons among
us than it is among my cases. For the documents on which I have founded
the history of Guy Olmstead I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Talbot,
of Chicago, well known from his studies of abnormalities of the jaws and
face, so often associated with nervous and mental abnormality. He knew the
man who addressed to him the letters from which I here quote:--


HISTORY XXVI.--On the twenty-eighth of March, 1894, at noon, in
the open street in Chicago, Guy T. Olmstead fired a revolver at a
letter-carrier named William L. Clifford. He came up from behind,
and deliberately fired four shots, the first entering Clifford's
loins, the other three penetrating the back of his head, so that
the man fell and was supposed to be fatally wounded. Olmstead
made little attempt to escape, as a crowd rushed up with the
usual cry of "Lynch him!" but waved his revolver, exclaiming:
"I'll never be taken alive!" and when a police-officer disarmed
him: "Don't take my gun; let me finish what I have to do." This
was evidently an allusion, as will be seen later on, to an
intention to destroy himself. He eagerly entered the prison-van,
however, to escape the threatening mob.

Olmstead, who was 30 years of age, was born near Danville, Ill.,
in which city he lived for many years. Both parents were born in
Illinois. His father, some twenty years ago, shot and nearly
killed a wealthy coal operator, induced to commit the crime, it
is said, by a secret organization of a hundred prominent citizens
to whom the victim had made himself obnoxious by bringing suits
against them for trivial causes. The victim became insane, but
the criminal was never punished, and died a few years later at
the age of 44. This man had another son who was considered
peculiar.

Guy Olmstead began to show signs of sexual perversity at the age
of 12. He was seduced (we are led to believe) by a man who
occupied the same bedroom. Olmstead's early history is not clear
from the data to hand. It appears that he began his career as a
schoolteacher in Connecticut, and that he there married the
daughter of a prosperous farmer; but shortly after he "fell in
love" with her male cousin, whom he describes as a very handsome
young man. This led to a separation from his wife, and he went
West.

He was never considered perfectly sane, and from October, 1886,
to May, 1889 he was in the Kankakee Insane Asylum. His illness
was reported as of three years' duration, and caused by general
ill-health; heredity doubtful, habits good, occupation that of a
schoolteacher. His condition was diagnosed as paranoia. On
admission he was irritable, alternately excited and depressed. He
returned home in good condition.

At this period, and again when examined later, Olmstead's
physical condition is described as, on the whole, normal and
fairly good. Height, 5 feet 8 inches; weight, 159 pounds. Special
senses normal; genitals abnormally small, with rudimentary penis.
His head is asymmetrical, and is full at the occiput, slightly
sunken at the bregma, and the forehead is low. His cephalic index
is 78. The hair is sandy, and normal in amount over head, face,
and body. His eyes are gray, small, and deeply set; the zygomae
are normal. The nose is large and very thin. There is arrested
development of upper jaw. The ears are excessively developed and
malformed. The face is very much lined, the nasolabial fissure is
deeply cut, and there are well-marked horizontal wrinkles on the
forehead, so that he looks at least ten years older than his
actual age. The upper jaw is of partial V-shape, the lower well
developed. The teeth and their tubercles and the alveolar process
are normal. The breasts are full. The body is generally well
developed; the hands and feet are large.

Olmstead's history is defective for some years after he left
Kankakee. In October, 1892, we hear of him as a letter-carrier in
Chicago. During the following summer he developed a passion for
William Clifford, a fellow letter-carrier about his own age, also
previously a schoolteacher, and regarded as one of the most
reliable and efficient men in the service. For a time Clifford
seems to have shared this passion, or to have submitted to it,
but he quickly ended the relationship and urged his friend to
undergo medical treatment, offering to pay the expenses himself.
Olmstead continued to write letters of the most passionate
description to Clifford, and followed him about constantly until
the latter's life was made miserable. In December, 1893, Clifford
placed the letters in the postmaster's hands, and Olmstead was
requested to resign at once. Olmstead complained to the Civil
Service Commission at Washington that he had been dismissed
without cause, and also applied for reinstatement, but without
success.

In the meanwhile, apparently on the advice of friends, he went
into hospital, and in the middle of February, 1894, his testicles
were removed. No report from the hospital is to hand. The effect
of removing the testicles was far from beneficial, and he began
to suffer from hysterical melancholia. A little later he went
into hospital again. On March 19th he wrote to Dr. Talbot from
the Mercy Hospital, Chicago: "I returned to Chicago last
Wednesday night, but felt so miserable I concluded to enter a
hospital again, and so came to Mercy, which is very good as
hospitals go. But I might as well go to Hades as far as any hope
of my getting well is concerned. I am utterly incorrigible,
utterly incurable, and utterly impossible. At home I thought for
a time that I was cured, but I was mistaken, and after seeing
Clifford last Thursday I have grown worse than ever so far as my
passion for him is concerned. Heaven, only knows how hard I have
tried to make a decent creature out of myself, but my vileness is
uncontrollable, and I might as well give up and die. I wonder if
the doctors knew that after emasculation it was possible for a
man to have erections, commit masturbation, and have the same
passion as before. I am ashamed of myself; I hate myself; but I
can't help it. I have friends among nice people, play the piano,
love music, books, and everything that is beautiful and
elevating; yet they can't elevate me, because this load of inborn
vileness drags me down and prevents my perfect enjoyment of
anything. Doctors are the only ones who understand and know my
helplessness before this monster. I think and work till my brain
whirls, and I can scarce refrain from crying out my troubles."
This letter was written a few days before the crime was
committed.

When conveyed to the police station Olmstead completely broke
down and wept bitterly, crying: "Oh! Will, Will, come to me! Why
don't you kill me and let me go to him!" (At this time he
supposed he had killed Clifford.) A letter was found on him, as
follows: "Mercy, March 27th. To Him Who Cares to Read: Fearing
that my motives in killing Clifford and myself may be
misunderstood, I write this to explain the cause of this homicide
and suicide. Last summer Clifford and I began a friendship which
developed into love." He then recited the details of the
friendship, and continued: "After playing a Liszt rhapsody for
Clifford over and over, he said that when our time to die came he
hoped we would die together, listening to such glorious music as
that. Our time has now come to die, but death will not be
accompanied by music. Clifford's love has, alas! turned to deadly
hatred. For some reason Clifford suddenly ended our relations and
friendship." In his cell he behaved in a wildly excited manner,
and made several attempts at suicide; so that he had to be
closely watched. A few weeks later he wrote to Dr. Talbot: "Cook
County Gaol, April 23. I feel as though I had neglected you in
not writing you in all this time, though you may not care to hear
from me, as I have never done anything but trespass on your
kindness. But please do me the justice of thinking that I never
expected all this trouble, as I thought Will and I would be in
our graves and at peace long before this. But my plans failed
miserably. Poor Will was not dead, and I was grabbed before I
could shoot myself. I think Will really shot himself, and I feel
certain others will think so, too, when the whole story comes out
in court. I can't understand the surprise and indignation my act
seemed to engender, as it was perfectly right and natural that
Will and I should die together, and nobody else's business. Do
you know I believe that poor boy will yet kill himself, for last
November when I in my grief and anger told his relations about
our marriage he was so frightened, hurt, and angry that he wanted
us both; to kill ourselves. I acquiesced gladly in this proposal
to commit suicide, but he backed out in a day or two. I am glad
now that Will is alive, and am glad that I am alive, even with
the prospect of years of imprisonment before me, but which I will
cheerfully endure for his sake. And yet for the last ten months
his influence has so completely controlled me, both body and
soul, that if I have done right he should have the credit for my
good deeds, and if I have done wrong he should be blamed for the
mischief, as I have not been myself at all, but a part of him,
and happy to merge my individuality into his."

Olmstead was tried privately in July. No new points were brought
out. He was sentenced to the Criminal Insane Asylum. Shortly
afterward, while still in the prison at Chicago, he wrote to Dr.
Talbot: "As you have been interested in my case from a scientific
point of view, there is a little something more I might tell you
about myself, but which I have withheld, because I was ashamed to
admit certain facts and features of my deplorable weakness. Among
the few sexual perverts I have known I have noticed that all are
in the habit of often closing the mouth with the lower lip
protruding beyond the upper. [Usually due to arrested development
of upper jaw.] I noticed the peculiarity in Mr. Clifford before
we became intimate, and I have often caught myself at the trick.
Before that operation my testicles would swell and become sore
and hurt me, and have seemed to do so since, just as a man will
sometimes complain that his amputated leg hurts him. Then, too,
my breasts would swell, and about the nipples would become hard
and sore and red. Since the operation there has never been a day
that I have been free from sharp, shooting pains down the abdomen
to the scrotum, being worse at the base of the penis. Now that my
fate is decided, I will say that really my passion for Mr.
Clifford is on the wane, but I don't know whether the improvement
is permanent or not. I have absolutely no passion for other men,
and have begun to hope now that I can yet outlive my desire for
Clifford, or at least control it. I have not yet told of this
improvement in my condition, because I wished people to still
think I was insane, so that I would be sure to escape being sent
to the penitentiary. I know I was insane at the time I tried to
kill both Clifford and myself, and feel that I don't deserve such
a dreadful punishment as being sent to a State prison. However, I
think it was that operation and my subsequent illness that caused
my insanity rather than passion for Clifford. I should very much
like to know if you really consider sexual perversion an
insanity."

When discharged from the Criminal Insane Asylum, Olmstead
returned to Chicago and demanded his testicles from the City
Postmaster, whom he accused of being in a systematized conspiracy
against him. He asserted that the postmaster was one of the chief
agents in a plot against him, dating from before the castration.
He was then sent to the Cook Insane Hospital. It seems probable
that a condition of paranoia is now firmly established.

The following cases are all bisexual, attraction being felt toward both
sexes, usually in predominant degree toward the male:--

HISTORY XXVII.--H.C., American, aged 28, of independent means,
unmarried, the elder of two children. His history may best be
given in his own words:--

"I am on both sides distantly of English ancestry, the first
colonists of my name having come to New England in 1630. Both my
mother's and my father's families have been prolific in soldiers
and statesmen; my mother's contributed one president to the
United States. So far as I am aware, none of my antecedents have
betrayed mental vagaries, except a maternal uncle, who, from
overstudy, became for a year insane.

"I am a graduate of two universities with degrees in arts and
medicine. After a year as physician in a hospital, I relinquished
medicine altogether, to follow literature, a predilection since
early boyhood.

"I awoke to sexual feeling at the age of 7, when, at a small
private school, glimpsing bare thighs above the stockings of girl
schoolmates, I dimly exulted. This fetishism, as it grew more
definite, centered at last upon the thighs and then the whole
person of one girl in particular. My first sexually tinged dream
was of her--that while she stood near I impinged my penis upon a
red-hot anvil and then, in beatific self-immolation, exhibited
the charred stump to her wondering, round eyes. This love,
however, abated at the coming of a new girl to the school, who,
not more beautiful, but more buxom, made stronger appeal to my
nascent sexuality. One afternoon, in the loft of her father's
stable, she induced me to disrobe, herself setting the example.
The erection our mutual handlings produced on me was without
conscious impulse; I felt only a childish curiosity on beholding
our genital difference. But the episode started extravagant
whimsies, one of which persistently obsessed me: with these
obviously compensatory differences, why might not the girl and I
effect some sort of copulation? This fantasy, drawn exclusively
from that unique experience, charmed with its grotesqueness only,
for at that time my sense of sex was but inchoate and my
knowledge of it was nothing. The bizarre conceit, submitted to
the equally ignorant girl and approved, was borne to the paternal
hay-loft and there, with much bungling, brought to surprising and
pleasurable consummation.

"In the four ensuing years I repeated the act not seldom with
this girl and with others.

"When I was 11 my sister and I were taken by our parents to
Europe, where we remained six years, attending school each winter
in a different city and, during the summer, travelling in various
countries.

"Abroad my lust was glutted to the full: the amenable
girl-playmate was ubiquitous, whom I plied with ardor at Swiss
hotels, German watering-places, French pensions,--where not?
Toward puberty I first repaired at times to prostitutes.

"Masturbation, excepting a few experiments, I never resorted to.
Few of my schoolmates avowedly practised it.

"Of homosexuality my sole hearing was through the classics,
where, with no long pondering, I opined it merely our modern
comradery, poetically aggrandized, masquerading in antique
habiliments and phraseology. It never came home to me; it attuned
to no tone in the scale of my sympathies; I possessed no
touchstone for transmitting the recitals of those ambiguous
amours into fiery messages. The relation to my own sex was,
intellectually, an occasional friendship devoid of strong
affection; physically, a mild antagonism, the naked body of a man
was slightly repellant. Statues of women evoked both carnal and
esthetic response; of men, no emotions whatever, save a deepening
of that native antipathy. Similarly in paintings, in literature,
the drama, the men served but as foils for the delicious maidens,
who visited my aerial seraglios and lapped me in roseate
dreamings.

"In my eighteenth year we returned to America, where I entered
the university.

"The course of my love of women was now a little erratic; normal
connection began to lose fascination. As long ago I had
formulated untutored the _rationale_ of coitus, so now
imagination, groping in the dark, conceived a fresh fillip for
the appetite--_cunnilinctus_. But this, though for a while quite
adequate, soon ceased to gratify. At this juncture, Christmas of
my first college year, I was appointed editor of a small
magazine, an early stricture of whose new conduct was paucity of
love stories. Such improvident neglect was in keeping with my
altering view of women, a view accorded to me by self-dissipation
of the glamour through which they had been wont to appear. I had
wandered somehow behind the scenes, and beheld, no footlights of
sex intervening, the once so radiant fairies resolved into a
raddled humanity, as likable as ever, but desirable no longer.

"Soon after this the Oscar Wilde case was bruiting about. The
newspaper accounts of it, while illuminating, flashed upon me no
light of self-revelation; they only amended some idle conjectures
as to certain mystic vices I had heard whispered of. Here and
there a newspaper allusion still too recondite was painstakingly
clarified by an effeminate fellow-student, who, I fancy now,
would have shown no reluctance had I begged him to adduce
practical illustration. I purchased, too, photographs of Oscar
Wilde, scrutinizing them under the unctuous auspices of this same
emasculate and blandiloquent mentor. If my interest in Oscar
Wilde arose from any other emotion than the rather morbid
curiosity then almost universal, I was not conscious of it.

"Erotic dreams, precluded hitherto by coition, came now to beset
me. The persons of these dreams were (and still are) invariably
women, with this one remembered exception: I dreamed that Oscar
Wilde, one of my photographs of him incarnate, approached me with
a buffoon languishment and perpetrated _fellatio_, an act
verbally expounded shortly before by my oracle. For a month or
more, recalling this dream disgusted me.

"The few subsequent endeavors, tentative and half-hearted, to
repristinate my venery were foredoomed, partly because I had
feared they were, to failure: erection was incomplete,
ejaculation without pleasure.

"There seemed a fallacy in this behavior. Why coitus without
sensual desire for it? No sense of duty impelled me, nor dread of
sexual aberration. The explanation is this: attraction to females
was not expunged, simply sublimed; my imagination, no longer
importing women from observation, created its own delectable
sirens, grown exacting and transcendental, petitioned reality in
vain. Substance had receded for good now, and soon even these
tormenting shadows of it became ever dimmer and dimmer, until
they too at length faded into nothingness.

"The antipodes of the sexual sphere turned more and more toward
the light of my tolerance. Inversion, till now stained with a
slight repugnance, became esthetically colorless at last, and
then delicately retinted, at first solely with pity for its
victims, but finally, the color deepening, with half-conscious
inclination to attach it to myself as a remote contingency. This
revolution, however, was not without external impetus. The
prejudiced tone of a book I was reading, Krafft-Ebing's
_Psychopathia Sexualis_, by prompting resentment, led me on to
sympathy. My championing, purely abstract though it was to begin
with, none the less involved my looking at things with eyes
hypothetically inverted,--an orientation for the sake of
argument. After a while, insensibly and at no one moment,
hypothesis merged into reality: I myself was inverted. That
occasional and fictitious inversion had never, I believe,
superposed this true inversion; rather a true inversion, those
many years dormant, had simply responded finally to a stimulus
strong and prolonged enough, as a man awakens when he is loudly
called.