“Pardon me for my rudeness, but I was wishing I could get acquainted with you. I am a baby, and I want a big, strong, brave fellow like you to pet me. I’ll give you a dollar if you’ll pet me for a few minutes, and let me sit on your lap.”
Much to my surprise and disappointment, he sent me away with a curse. Twice repulsed, I decided to try again in a part of the city where the immigrant element predominates. Both the neighborhoods tried were quasi-American. I strolled down the Bowery, staring longingly and beseechingly into the eyes of the adolescents I passed, but too timid to accost any. Those who had known me all my life, had they met me now, would have wondered what could have brought into the then theatre and red-light district of the foreign laboring classes of the city, at an hour approaching midnight, a timid youth, hitherto called an “innocent,” naturally pious, and generally esteemed for his intellectual tastes. My friends would never have dreamed that I would frequent that red-light district near midnight, and would never have believed it if any one told them that I was there for no good purpose.
The “Innocent” in Red-light District.
Arrived at the southern end of the Bowery, I turned into New Bowery, because it looked dark and crime-inviting. I roamed for another half hour in the dark, deserted streets of this quarter, accosting one or two young dockrats who were still abroad, but they simply ransacked my pockets, gave me a parting blow, and went on their way. Moistening my handkerchief at a drinking fountain, I washed my bloodstained face. Finally, after midnight, thoroughly sobered by my disappointments and physical smarting, I boarded a car. Securing my key from its hiding place, I let myself into my lodgings without any one ever learning of my nocturnal ramble.
How shall such conduct on the part of one of the members of an intellectual and decent community be judged? Let not the reader in pharisaical self-complacency—an attitude of mind all too common in dealing with the victims of congenital defects of mind or brain—begin to set his own virtue over against the apparent depravity of such as I. If he has not fallen as low as I, it is not necessarily because he is morally good, and I morally bad, but because in him there has been no overpowering impulse to do what mankind regards as unspeakably low. As to yielding to the sexual instinct, many have comparatively weak impulses in that direction, and could remain celibate all their lives without experiencing any kind or degree of suffering. Others would be rendered semi-mad by such abstinence, as was the case with me. The Rev. Robert Collyer has stated the matter well. It is like two young men to each of whom is given a field to cultivate. That of the one is fertile, free from stones, thicket, and weeds; that of the other a dense marshy jungle. Can the two contestants be expected in the same time to produce equally good crops of grain from their widely different pieces of land? Some men are born with much in their mental make-up that disposes them to evil, while others find it no effort to live virtuous lives.
Judgment on My Slumming.
While I have thus in my more mature judgment considered myself practically irresponsible for the conduct just described, in that early stage of my career, I was not so sure, and during the day following this first nocturnal ramble, was overwhelmed with a sense of shame and guilt. When night came on, I made my way to a solitary spot in a large park, where I threw myself on the ground to weep and shriek and pray. The burden of my prayer was that God would change my nature that very moment and give me the mind and powers of a man. I soon heard footsteps approaching, arose instantly, and walked from the spot. The men said they were looking for an owl which they had heard hooting. It was probably only my peculiar insane, half-suppressed shrieks they had heard.
Faith-cure Tried.
At this time I entered the following in my diary: “I am experiencing the enslaving power of sin. I now know how to sympathize with poor sinners, drunkards and harlots.... Do such perverse passions spring from idolatry and forgetting God, as St. Paul says? But for several years I have lived in communion with God. Several different times in my life I have passed a month without conscious sin. How can this accord with the fact that I have repeatedly in childhood and several times in youth committed the act [fellatio] recognized by men as the most heinous of crimes?”
I soon went to my village home for the summer, where I found the struggle against sensuality much less severe. For the first month there I lived without conscious sin. Through occupying my mind diligently with the high ethical ideals presented in the New Testament, and living continually in the spirit of prayer, I was able to bar completely from my life all the movings of the sensual nature, and all regard for self. Indeed I lived in this state of “entire sanctification” almost throughout the summer vacation, spending several hours a day in religious exercises. I came into intimate relations with a Christian faith-curist, and felt it to be my religious duty to be anointed by him for the removal of my perverted nature and for the reception of the normal instincts of a man. For over a month after the anointing, I persisted in the confident belief that God had miraculously brought about the change desired, and that I was now in full possession of the powers of a man. But gradually I had to admit the truth that no change had taken place.