man means a lonely man--a man cut off from all companionship, all

sociability. He moves about the world, but does not mix with it.
Between him and his fellow-men there runs ever an impassable

barrier--a strong, invisible wall that, trying in vain to scale, he
but bruises himself against. He sees the pleasant faces and hears the

pleasant voices on the other side, but he cannot stretch his hand
across to grasp another hand. He stands watching the merry groups,

and he longs to speak and to claim kindred with them. But they pass
him by, chatting gayly to one another, and he cannot stay them. He

tries to reach them, but his prison walls move with him and hem him in
on every side. In the busy street, in the crowded room, in the grind

of work, in the whirl of pleasure, amid the many or amid the
few--wherever men congregate together, wherever the music of human

speech is heard and human thought is flashed from human eyes, there,
shunned and solitary, the shy man, like a leper, stands apart. His

soul is full of love and longing, but the world knows it not. The
iron mask of shyness is riveted before his face, and the man beneath

is never seen. Genial words and hearty greetings are ever rising to
his lips, but they die away in unheard whispers behind the steel

clamps. His heart aches for the weary brother, but his sympathy is
dumb. Contempt and indignation against wrong choke up his throat, and

finding no safety-valve whence in passionateutterance they may burst
forth, they only turn in again and harm him. All the hate and scorn

and love of a deep nature such as the shy man is ever cursed by fester
and corrupt within, instead of spending themselves abroad, and sour

him into a misanthrope and cynic.
Yes, shy men, like ugly women, have a bad time of it in this world, to

go through which with any comfort needs the hide of a rhinoceros.
Thick skin is, indeed, our moral clothes, and without it we are not

fit to be seen about in civilized society. A poor gasping, blushing
creature, with trembling knees and twitching hands, is a painful sight

to every one, and if it cannot cure itself, the sooner it goes and
hangs itself the better.

The disease can be cured. For the comfort of the shy, I can assure
them of that from personal experience. I do not like speaking about

myself, as may have been noticed, but in the cause of humanity I on
this occasion will do so, and will confess that at one time I was, as

the young man in the Bab Ballad says, "the shyest of the shy," and
"whenever I was introduced to any pretty maid, my knees they knocked

together just as if I was afraid." Now, I would--nay, have--on this
very day before yesterday I did the deed. Alone and entirely by

myself (as the school-boy said in translating the "Bellum Gallicum")
did I beard a railway refreshment-room young lady in her own lair. I

rebuked her in terms of mingled bitterness and sorrow for her
callousness and want of condescension. I insisted, courteously but

firmly, on being accorded that deference and attention that was the
right of the traveling Briton, and at the end I looked her full in the

face. Need I say more?
True, immediately after doing so I left the room with what may

possibly have appeared to be precipitation and without waiting for any
refreshment. But that was because I had changed my mind, not because

I was frightened, you understand.
One consolation that shy folk can take unto themselves is that shyness

is certainly no sign of stupidity. It is easy enough for bull-headed
clowns to sneer at nerves, but the highest natures are not necessarily

those containing the greatest amount of moral brass. The horse is not
an inferior animal to the cock-sparrow, nor the deer of the forest to

the pig. Shyness simply means extreme sensibility, and has nothing
whatever to do with self-consciousness or with conceit, though its

relationship to both is continually insisted upon by the poll-parrot
school of philosophy.

Conceit, indeed, is the quickest cure for it. When it once begins to
dawn upon you that you are a good deal cleverer than any one else in

this world, bashfulness becomes shocked and leaves you. When you
can look round a roomful of people and think that each one is a mere

child in intellect compared with yourself you feel no more shy of them
than you would of a select company of magpies or orang-outangs.

Conceit is the finest armor that a man can wear. Upon its smooth,
impenetrable surface the puny dagger-thrusts of spite and envy glance

harmlessly aside. Without that breast-plate the sword of talent
cannot force its way through the battle of life, for blows have to be

borne as well as dealt. I do not, of course, speak of the conceit
that displays itself in an elevated nose and a falsetto voice. That

is not real conceit--that is only playing at being conceited; like
children play at being kings and queens and go strutting about with

feathers and long trains. Genuine conceit does not make a man
objectionable. On the contrary, it tends to make him genial,

kind-hearted, and simple. He has no need of affectation--he is far
too well satisfied with his own character; and his pride is too

deep-seated to appear at all on the outside. Careless alike of praise
or blame, he can afford to be truthful. Too far, in fancy, above the

rest of mankind to trouble about their petty distinctions, he is
equally at home with duke or costermonger. And valuing no one's

standard but his own, he is never tempted to practice that miserable
pretense that less self-reliant people offer up as an hourly sacrifice

to the god of their neighbor's opinion.
The shy man, on the other hand, is humble--modest of his own judgment

and over-anxiousconcerning that of others. But this in the case of a
young man is surely right enough. His character is unformed. It is

slowly evolving itself out of a chaos of doubt and disbelief. Before
the growing insight and experience the diffidence recedes. A man

rarely carries his shyness past the hobbledehoy period. Even if his
own inward strength does not throw it off, the rubbings of the world

generally smooth it down. You scarcely ever meet a really shy
man--except in novels or on the stage, where, by the bye, he is much

admired, especially by the women.
There, in that supernatural land, he appears as a fair-haired and

saintlike young man--fair hair and goodness always go together on the
stage. No respectableaudience would believe in one without the

other. I knew an actor who mislaid his wig once and had to rush on to
play the hero in his own hair, which was jet-black, and the gallery

howled at all his noble sentiments under the impression that he was
the villain. He--the shy young man--loves the heroine, oh so

devotedly (but only in asides, for he dare not tell her of it), and he
is so noble and unselfish, and speaks in such a low voice, and is so

good to his mother; and the bad people in the play, they laugh at him
and jeer at him, but he takes it all so gently, and in the end it

transpires that he is such a clever man, though nobody knew it, and
then the heroine tells him she loves him, and he is so surprised, and

oh, so happy! and everybody loves him and asks him to forgive them,
which he does in a few well-chosen and sarcastic words, and blesses

them; and he seems to have generally such a good time of it that all
the young fellows who are not shy long to be shy. But the really shy

man knows better. He knows that it is not quite so pleasant in
reality. He is not quite so interesting there as in the fiction. He

is a little more clumsy and stupid and a little less devoted and
gentle, and his hair is much darker, which, taken altogether,

considerably alters the aspect of the case.
The point where he does resemble his ideal is in his faithfulness. I

am fully prepared to allow the shy young man that virtue: he is
constant in his love. But the reason is not far to seek. The fact is

it exhausts all his stock of courage to look one woman in the face,
and it would be simply impossible for him to go through the ordeal

with a second. He stands in far too much dread of the whole female
sex to want to go gadding about with many of them. One is quite

enough for him.
Now, it is different with the young man who is not shy. He has

temptations which his bashful brother never encounters. He looks
around and everywhere sees roguish eyes and laughing lips. What more

natural than that amid so many roguish ayes and laughing lips he
should become confused and, forgetting for the moment which particular

pair of roguish ayes and laughing lips it is that he belongs to, go
off making love to the wrong set. The shy man, who never looks at

anything but his own boots, sees not and is not tempted. Happy shy
man!