Transvestia

est form of the public school. She taught there for only a short time and died in 1893. I was not yet twelve.

When born I got some sort of infection that broke out like abscesses in many spots. I carried scars for years. One plugged the tear duct from one eye. Why my uncle did not clear it out as other doctors told me it could have been done then, is hard to understand. So I grew up with tears running down one cheek a lot of the time. What it meant to a delicate, shy, intro- verted boy tohave people ask why he was always cry- ing, is easy to imagine. I was not expected to live at all at the time, and was supposed to be very deli- cate, though I have now outlived almost all my school mates. I was very badly spoiled, and did not go to her school till shortly before she left it for the public one. Yet I early learned to read, and read every book in the house. Father had a very extensive library and had managed to keep most of it. So my education was way ahead of my age. Of course I went to the Public school when Mother started teaching there and made rapid progress.

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I played with the boys who came to the private school and with a girl across the street, and at times with my cousin, the doctor's daughter, a regular tom- boy" who was always in trouble. But my one special chum, a boy my age, lived a block away. We had to cross a street where several bigger boys lived and who loved to bully and hurt the smaller ones.

So we were in fear of them whenever we went out, and of course were a timid pair. Besides that I was too much mother's baby. I slept with her till her last illness. Then I went to my great aunt, a very old lady, who lived in a small house next to my uncle's big one. It had just two small bedrooms, so for near- ly two years, until uncle built a room for me on the house, I shared one with a young woman cousin.

So from birth till nearly fourteen, I was complete- ly surrounded by females, their influence and their clothing. I had almost no contact with men at all as even all teachers were Women. Uncle never bothered

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