a girl, and feeling ashamed about it I could not con- fide in any one, not even my mother. Mother seemed so proud of the fact she had two sons, and hoped that they would be real mannish. I just couldn't bring my- self to reveal my feelings to anyone, and I spent many nights in bed crying over this. It was my secret, and I had no one to share it with. People thought I was a girl and there were times that I thought mother wished I were a girl, for she would ask me if I ever wished I were a girl. I would hasten to assure her that I did not, but I could hardly hold back the tears. I guess this question came to her mind because I played with the girls and avoided the boys.

Grandmother lived across the lake from our house that we moved to in 1912. A spinster aunt came to live with us at that time. About twice a week she and mother would walk around the lake to visit grandmother. When they were out of sight, I would put on her fur coat, and powder my face, lipstick was not used in those days. One day I did not hear them return and I was caught! That was the end of my dressing, but not the end of my desires. There was another time when a friend of mother's came to visit another aunt in town. On her way back to Chicago, she stopped at our house and spent the night. It was a Saturday morning and she and mother were in the kitchen preparing breakfast. I was about eight years old at that time. I had been playing in the yard and came into the kitchen to see if breakfast was ready. Mother's friend called me to her. She took my face between her hands and running her fingers through my long hair she said, "what beau- tiful hair, so shiny and black". "you really should have been a girl!" I was embarrassed and ran to my room and cried. She had, so to speak, uncovered my secret. For the next eight or nine years there was not much change in the pattern of my life, except that I learned to use more caution when I dressed up. I had learned by now that I would never be content to lead a totally masculine life. I just had to have a certain amount of femininity about me at all times.

Now as I look back I am sure that mother was aware of it too. I wish that I had confided in her as

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