I belong to a reasonably
healthy, prolific, and long-lived family. On my father's side,
however, there is a tendency toward pulmonary troubles. He
himself died of pneumonia, and two of his brothers and a nephew
of consumption. Neither of my parents were morbid or eccentric.
Excepting for a certain shyness with strangers, my father was a
very masculine man. My mother is somewhat nervous, but is not
imaginative, nor at all demonstrative in her affections. I think
that my own imaginative and artistic temperament must come from
my father's side. Perhaps my French ancestry has something to do
with it. With the exception of my maternal grandfather, all my
progenitors have been of French descent. My mother's father was
English.

"I possess a mercurial temperament and a strong sense of the
ludicrous. Though my _physique_ is slight, my health has always
been excellent. Of late years especially I have been greatly
given to introspection and self-scrutiny, but have never had any
hallucinations, mental delusions, nor hysterics, and am not at
all superstitious. Spiritualistic manifestations, hypnotic
dabblings, and the other psychical fads of the day have little or
no attraction for me. In fact, I have always been skeptical of
them, and they rather bore me.

"At school I was an indolent, dreamy boy, shirking study, but
otherwise fairly docile to my teachers. From earliest childhood I
have indulged in omnivorous taste for reading, my particular
likings being for travels, esthetics, metaphysical and
theological subjects, and more recently for poetry and certain
forms of mysticism. I never cared much for history or for
scientific subjects. From the beginning, too, I showed a strong
artistic bent, and possessed an overpowering love for all things
beautiful. As a child I was passionately fond of flowers, loved
to be in the woods and alone, and wanted to become an artist. My
parents opposed the latter wish and I gave way before their
opposition.

"In me the homosexual nature is singularly complete, and is
undoubtedly congenital. The most intense delight of my childhood
(even when a tiny boy in a nurse's charge) was to watch acrobats
and riders at the circus. This was not so much for the skillful
feats as on account of the beauty of their persons. Even then I
cared chiefly for the