"The Man Who Thought Himself a Woman"

The Knickerbocker; or New York Monthly Magazine 50, no. 6 (December 1857): 599-610.

Japhet Colbones was a very odd individual. All his ancestors were odd individuals, as far back as they can be remembered. His great-grand-father, at the age of seventy-one, built a hut in a patch of thick woods, leaving a handsome and comfortable home, a wife, children, and grand-children, to live alone by himself. He even forbade the visits of his family, though a favorite daughter ventured sometimes to present herself on the forbidden premises, till one day he brought out his gun and threatened to shoot her if she came again. At long intervals he would return to his old home, but he required to be received in all respects as a stranger. Dire was his wrath if any one called him 'father;' and the little tow-headed urchins on the premises were taught, with their catechism, not to notice the old man whenever they should see him, nor, on peril of their lives, to call him by the endearing cognomen of grand-daddy.

Nobody could account for this freak taken in his old age. His forest residence was uncouth, irregular—lighted by an unsheltered opening, filled with logs and coarse contrivances for furniture. There, in his rude fire-place he cooked the game that he killed, with his own hands. Whenever he was out of necessary food he supplied himself from his well-filled larder at home, the servants or the daughters knowing what provision he wanted by the particular basket or utensil he carried.

It was useless for the old wife, poor thing! to follow him mutely, the longing in her heart to comfort and to live with him, plainly written on her face. He deigned to take no notice of her what ever, except to frown if he met her eye; and thus he lived till he died.

The son, grand-father to Japhet, was not a whit behind his father in his oddities. He caused a coat to be made wherein were introduced seven different colors, and would not kill or allow to be killed on his premises, any thing that had life. Consequently his family were Grahamites against their will. Cats and dogs swarmed in all directions, and it took nearly every thing that was raised to keep his constantly-multiplying herds. None who lived in Rattle-Snake Village can have forgotten the extraordinary sensation caused by his death, nor with what gusto scores of useless animals were sacrificed to the manes of the departed oddity.

Number three, father of Japhet, was in his way an original and an eccentric. His tastes travelled bookward. Not an auction took place in the neighboring city that he did not attend, and purchase every leather-covered and worm-eaten volume that could be found, oftentimes paying the most ridiculous prices, extorted by those who took advantage of his weakness. He is living now, a pale, loose-jointed man, a little weak in the knees, with an abundant shock of iron-gray locks; large, flatulent-looking blue-white eyes, a prominent nose, and a peaked chin. In his house books abounded. Not a closet, chest, trunk, drawer, or shelf but was filled with flapping leaves. The children kicked and tore them about the premises, for the old man seemed to set no store by them after he had made them his own by way of purchase. All the sentimental maids and youths came to 'Squire Colbones for mental aliment, and I am not sure that the collection was the choicest in the world. Many of them were never returned; and as Mrs. Colbones said, when the 'Squire grumbled, she was sure it was a mercy, for they eat, and drank, and slept on books now; and if they were all returned they'd have to build additions every year for the sake of getting a room to themselves.

All the male members of the Colbones family, were, as it is generally expressed, 'lacking somewhere.' The women were generally good, harmless creatures, with few idiosyncrasies, and feeble mental constitutions...