For several days my whole body was so sore as to make it painful to move about. Moreover, for several days I experienced a season of mental depression with impulses toward suicide. Few souls ever had such a burden to bear. Yet the world has no sympathy for these unhappiest of mortals, the refined sexual inverts. 'Thousands of them are driven to suicide out of every generation, and yet the world is unmoved by their sorrows. Every other human creature when in sorrow and trouble receives comfort from his fellows, but mankind heaps sorrow on sorrow upon the head of the already despairing invert. Even his own family turn their backs on him and disown him.
About this time, thoughts came to me of going over to London or Paris, far from my family, where they could never learn of my shame, and passing the remainder of my youth wholly given up to the life of a fille de joie. But I did not take this step, chiefly out of love for my parents, to save them sorrow on my account. ******* I have now reached a period of my life lasting over two years during which it was my luck to serve as private secretary to a millionaire septuagenarian living in the suburbs of the metropolis. Though surrounded with all the comforts of wealth, and having every opportunity for intellectual growth and enjoyment, the "procreative" instinct allowed me no rest. At times I would wish for a life of poverty in the slums with a mate to living in my refined and elegant surroundings without any opportunity for gratification of this instinct. I found it absolutely necessary to spend one night out of fourteen in the city's
