I now sprang out of bed, and started for the door, but he quickly removed the key. Though expecting to be brained, I cried “Help! Help!” “Stop your racket and you’ll get your things back!” But I kept pounding and shrieking until the hall-boy opened the door. I remained standing just outside until my companion left, watching that he took none of my belongings. He said that he was going after a policeman in order to have me arrested. The hall-boy appeared to be totally indifferent over the accusation of my associate.
A steamboat flirtation: In my extensive globe-trotting, only two or three times did I indulge in coquetry on a public conveyance, for fear of disgrace or even robbery. But on the present occasion I was so smitten that I took the risk. I had occasion to accompany my employer on a trip to Boston. We went by the all-sea route around Cape Cod. During the evening my employer preferred to remain inside, while I was out on deck. I discovered a handsome adolescent seated alone, clad in a golf suit, which always heightened to me a young man’s charms. I seated myself near him, dying with desire to enter into conversation, but for a while unable to surmount my bashfulness. But I soon began a conversation which lasted a large part of the night. I drew from him the whole story of his life. His last adventure had been a bicycle ride from Boston to New York. The more I gazed at him, the more I heard about his life, and the more I read his character from his countenance, his manners, and his adventures, the more did I discover in him lovable qualities. His ravishing beauty, his countenance ever beaming with smiles, his kindly disposition toward me, his hot sensual nature, his fearlessness, dare-deviltry, and thorough recklessness, and his intense masculinity in general, attracted me so strongly that I became ready—as already stated—to run the great risk of disclosing to my employer my perverted nature, and thus losing the excellent position I held. We talked on numerous subjects. After I had ascertained that he was a good-hearted fellow who would not easily take offense, and a Don Juan, I began to prepare to disclose my nature.
Method of Leading Up.
“You have a beautiful golf suit on.”
“I shall never wear the rag again except to go skating in next winter.”
“You must not do that. It sets your form off beautifully. You are the handsomest and the best dressed fellow on the boat.”
“Thank you. I’d give you a quarter for the compliment if I had the change.”
“You appear to think I am flattering you, or making sport of you, but I mean what I say. You have a beautiful build, and know how to dress in good taste.”
“From my hips down I am well enough built, but higher up I am too skinny.”