The Idle Thoughts of An Idle Fellow

hy. I am myself, though I am

d was the cause of much misery to myself and discomfort to every onea

orrespondents" in a small weekly journal andran as follows--I have never forgotten it: "Adopt an easy andpleasing manner, especially toward ladies."Poor wretch! I can imagine the grin with which he must have read thatadvice. "Adopt an easy and pleasing manner, especially towardladies," forsoo

reit inflicts upon him. He is able, to a certain extent, to communic

oom, and the most jovial spiritsbecome

nsulted by it. His awkwardness is resented as insolentcarelessness, and when, terror-stricken at the first word addressed tohim, the blood r

pression he endeavors to create, he is sureto convey its opposite. When he makes a joke,

eing an ass, while if, on the other hand, wishing toingratiate himself, he ventures

timeimmemorial. But if we look a little deeper we shall find there is apathetic, one might almost say a tragic, side to the picture.

em him inon every side. In the busy street, in the crowded room, in the grindof work, in the whirl of pleasure, amid the many or amid thefew--wherever men congregate together, wherever the music of humanspeech is heard and human thought is flashed from human eyes, there,shunned and solitary, the shy man, like a leper, stands apart. Hissoul is full of love and longing, but the world knows it not. Theiron mask of shyness is riveted before his face, and the man beneathis never seen. Genial words and hearty greetings ar

e of it in this world, togo through which wit

ed society. A poor gasping, blushingcreature, with trembling knees and twitching hands, is a painf

of the shy," and"whenever I was introduced to any pretty maid, my knees they knockedtogether just as if I was afraid." Now, I would--nay, have--on thisvery day before yesterday I did the deed. Alone and entirely bymyself (as the school-boy said in translating the "Bellum Gallicum")did I beard a railway refreshment-r

ppeared to be precipitation and without waiting for anyrefreshment. But that

are not necessarilythose containing the greatest amount of moral brass. The horse is notan inferior animal to the cock-sparrow, nor the deer of the forest tothe pig. Shyness simply means ex

inthis world, bashfulness becomes shocked and leaves you. When youcan look round a roomful of people and think that each one is a me

al conceit--that is only playing at being conceited; likechildren play at being kings and queens and go strutting about withfeathers and long trains. Genuine conceit does not make a manobjectionable. On the contrary, it tends to make him genial,kind-hearted, and simple. He has no need of affectation--he is fartoo well satisfied with his own character; and his pride is toodeep-seated to appear at all on t

evolving itself out of a chaos of doubt and disbelief. Beforethe growing insight and experience the diffidence recedes. A manrarely carries his shyness past the hobbledehoy period. Even if hisown inward strength

y in asides, for he dare not tell her of it), and heis so noble and unselfish, and speaks in such a low voice, and is sogood to his mother; and the bad people in the play, they laugh at himand jeer at him, but he takes it all so gently, and in the end ittranspires that he is such a clever man, though nobody knew it, andthen the heroine tells him she loves him, and he is so surprised, andoh, so happy! and everybody loves him and asks him to forgive them,which he does in a fe

he reason is not far to seek. The fact isit exhausts all his stock of courage to look one woman in the face,and it would be simply impossible for him to go th

ng lips. What morenatural than that amid so many roguish ayes and laughing lips heshould become confused and, forgetting for the moment which particularpair of roguish ayes and

himselfevery day for not being able to. He will now and again, screwing uphis courage by a tremendous effort, plunge into ro

or them no sympathy. Losing an umbrella,falling in love, toothache, black eyes, and having your hat sat uponmay be mentioned as a few examples, but the chief of t

ce to each other; "he's blushing

right on the edgeof the chair.""Seems to have plen

ge," chimes in thecomic man, "especially as he seems so anxious to hide them."And then another suggests that with such a voice he ought to have beena sea-captain. Some dra

iarities and the company a

turning to him with "This is the wayyou shake hands," proceeds to go through a comic pantomime with therest of the room, taking hold of every one's hand as if it were a hotplate and flabbily dropping it again. And then they ask him why heblushes, and why he stammers, and why he always speaks in an almostinaudible tone, as if they thought he did it on purpose. Then one ofthem, sticking out his chest and strutting about the room like apouter-pigeon, suggests quite seriously that that is the

ing down their gentle eyes whenlooked at and running away when spoken to; while we man are supposedto be a bold and rollicky lot, and the poor dear little women admireus for it, but are terribly afraid of us. It is a pretty theory, but,like most generally accepted theories, mere nonsense. The girl oftwelv

well acknowledged to need comment. Nor is the example a fairone to cite in the present instance, the positions not being equallybalanced. Love