The exceedingly early age at which homosexual habits first manifest themselves, renders it extremely difficult to determine, with any degree of certainty, whether a specific case be one of exclusive acquirement, or assisted by prenatal influence. Sometimes the acquisition is forced upon the unwilling victim, almost vi et armis, by the constant solicitations of a friend, particularly in the cases of bovs.

A Disagreeable Quick-Step

An instance is recorded, as to the acquisition of the habit of masturbating, to which the school experience of more than one reader will furnish an almost parallel example, of a boy asking his parents to withdraw him from a certain school, and giving as a reason the shocking fact that the other boys in his dormitory, eleven in number, made a regular practice of waylaying him in the hallway, at night, and masturbating him forcibly.

While one or two held him down, another was selected to perform the operation, who rubbed his penis to the tune of some fast, comic song, or dance, the fellow being admitted to this privilege who could do it to the fastest and most rollicking air, producing a quickstep which, however enjoyable to the audience, was little relished by the victim, who found, however, not so much fault with the tempo or the music as the character of t he dance.1