“Anything at all!”
“O what a biceps! Like a tremendous boil protruding out of your arm except that it is hard as steel. Among the scores of Strong Hanses whose biceps I have been privileged to pinch, you are the muscular prodigy![[31]] You must be a terrible slugger! I pity your opponent! Only a pyramid of jelly after you got through with him! Do you know, Mr. Strong Hans, that I have fallen in love with your biceps?”
“That’s a funny thin’ ter fall in love with! But just feel me chest muscles and leg muscles.”
“They are steel!” I cried in ecstacy. “Because of your being a muscular prodigy, I am driven beside myself in hero-worship! Do you know what the word ‘worship’ means? It means that I could prostrate myself with lips to your dirty shoes, and cry out, over and over again, forever, forever, your wonderful endowments! I could forever call you Sledge-hammer Wielder! Personification of Strength! Incarnation of Power! Man of Iron! Mighty Man of Valor! Mighty Man of Renown! Heaven wills that I, a poor weakling, bow low in adoration of a muscular prodigy!”
|A Rare Find.|
“You said it! I’ve got the build of a pugilist. But it’s meself as needs ter go ter the dentist ter git me teeth filled and haven’t the price.”
“I’ll attend to that. Because you are a rare find, Mr. Strong Hans! You are one young fellow out of ten thousand. I mustn’t lose track of you. Let me tell you the plans that have been going through my head since I met you. Nature has made it impossible for me ever to marry a woman. For I am myself really a girl whom Nature has disguised as a fellow. I only dress as a fellow because the law ignorantly requires it. Nature meant that I should go through life with a husband—not a wife, as ignorant society commands. For some years it has been my dream to take to live under the same roof, as long as God leaves me in this world, a young fellow who approaches my ideal. And you do as hardly another I ever met. And I want you to live with me as my husband. When you reach twenty-five, you may also marry a physical woman, and she will keep house for us. I shall always regard your and her children as my own. God has given me much above the average brain power, and I can earn money enough to support all. You will never have a care. You need never work unless you want to. For I will be your slave. Because you possess in by far the highest degree the bodily and mental endowment that are for me a magnet. You will be paying |Full-fledged’s Instincts Equally Unæsthetic.| for all I do by merely allowing me to gaze at your marvellous build a few minutes every day.
“You—like every one else—probably think I am a very bad sort of person. But perhaps you will discover some counterbalancing good qualities. In reality my bad side is no worse than that [sexuality] of all other men. The virile call me ‘Child of the Devil!’ The pot has always liked to call the kettle black. A person always considers right and high-minded whatever he himself is inclined to, and wrong and devilish whatever others are inclined to. Because people are thus in love with themselves and their own tendencies, they will not forgive my own bad side. Not because it is in any way harmful; merely because it is so exceptional.
“I have the means to support you from this evening on.[[32]] I guarantee you as good a start in life as young fellow ever had. Wouldn’t you like to become a lawyer or physician? Then why not tell me your true name and address, lest I lose you? Because until I know you thoroughly, I can not reveal my own legal name and where I live. Because people misunderstand so terribly women-men like myself.”
“Harvey Green, Eagle Hotel, Third Avenue.”