“Dick decided to make the trip in the garb of a girl and have some fun with the mashers en route.”

Some truly do like it hot, as proven by this article about a female impersonator aboard a ferry boat, which was published in the August 12, 1892 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, having originally appeared in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat:

“‘In 1859 I went from New Orleans to Cincinnati by boat in company with the greatest female impersonator I ever saw,’ said T.N. Payne, at Lindell. ‘His name was Richard Pryor and he was familiarly known as Wild Dick. He was a handsome young Creole, with soft black eyes, delicate features and a hand and foot that might have been the pride of a duchess. Dick decided to make the trip in the garb of a girl and have some fun with the mashers en route. He got himself up regardless, as he expressed it, and posed as a young French widow of fortune. The boat had a large passenger list and young madame was soon the center of an ardent circle of admirers, to whom she dispensed her smiles with gracious impartiality and drunk the wine for which they paid with such evident pleasure. Madame’s free and easy conduct soon became the scandal of the boat, and the captain expostulated with her. She gave him an arch smile, took him by the arm, paced the deck with him a few moments and returned with new zest to her admirers and her wine, while the captain and the clerk made the rounds of her scandalized passengers. Madame made an appointment with her four most ardent admirers to meet them on deck at 11 o’clock that night. They were promptly on hand, each jealous of the others. Five minutes later Dick came swaggering out in male costume, with a big cigar between his teeth and followed by fully fifty delighted passengers. He sat down, put his feet up on the rail, blew a cloud of tobacco smoke and said in his sweetest accents, ‘Ah, zhentlemen, you may kees my hand.’ Then, in tones like the hoarse croaking of a bull frog: ‘What a villainous world this is!’

There was a roar of laughter from the passengers. The mashers were dumbfounded, then angry. They demanded satisfaction, but Dick only said sweetly, ‘Ah, you haf all say already I keel you with my eyes.’ There was another bout of laughter and the four crestfallen beaux bought wine for the crowd.”