tter over
thirty years ago, "Olim Etoniensis" wrote (_Journal of
Education_, 1882, p. 85) that, on making a list of the vicious
boys he had known at Eton, he found that "these very boys had
become cabinet ministers, statesmen, officers, clergymen,
country-gentlemen, etc., and that they are nearly all of them
fathers of thriving families, respected and prosperous." But, as
Marro has remarked, the question is not thus settled. Public
distinction by no means necessarily implies any fine degree of
private morality.

Sometimes the manifestations thus appearing in schools or
wherever youths are congregated together are not truly
homosexual, but exhibit a more or less brutal or even sadistic
perversion of the immature sexual instinct. This may be
illustrated by the following narrative concerning a large London
city warehouse: "A youth left my class at the age of 161/2," writes
a correspondent, "to take up an apprenticeship in a large
wholesale firm in G---- Street. Fortunately he went on probation
of three weeks before articling. He came to me at the end of the
first week asking me to intercede with his mother (he had no
father) not to let him return. He told me that almost nightly,
and especially when new fellows came, the youths in his dormitory
(eleven in number) would waylay him, hold him down, and rub his
parts to the tune of some comic song or dance-music. The boy who
could choose the fastest time had the privilege of performing the
operation, and most had to be the victim in turn unless new boys
entered, when they would sometimes be subjected to this for a
week. This boy, having been brought up strictly, was shocked,
dazed, and alarmed; but they stopped him from calling out, and he
dared not report it. Most boys entered direct on their
apprenticeship without probation, and had no chance to get out. I
procured the boy's release from the place and gave the manager to
understand what went on." In such a case as this it has usually
happened that a strong boy of brutal and perverse instincts and
some force of character initiates proceedings which the others
either fall into with complacency or are too weak to resist.

Max Dessoir[127] came to the conclusion that "an undifferentiated sexual
feeling is normal, on the average, during the first years of
puberty,--i.e., from 13 to 15 in bo