or 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!

Not but what the shy man himself would much rather not be happy in that
way. He longs to "go it" with the others, and curses himself every day
for not being able to. He will now and again, screwing up his courage
by a tremendous effort, plunge into roguishness. But it is always a
terrible _fiasco_, and after one or two feeble flounders he crawls out
again, limp and pitiable.

I say "pitiable," though I am afraid he never is pitied. There are
certain misfortunes which, while inflicting a vast amount of suffering
upon their victims, gain for them no sympathy. Losing an umbrella,
falling in love, toothache, black eyes, and having your hat sat upon may
be mentioned as a few examples, but the chief of them all is shyness.
The shy man is regarded as an animate joke. His tortures are the sport
of the drawing-room arena and are pointed out and discussed with much
gusto.

"Look," cry his tittering audience to each other; "he's blushing!"

"Just watch his legs," says one.

"Do you notice how he is sitting?" adds another: "right on the edge of
the chair."

"Seems to have plenty of color," sneers a military-looking gentleman.

"Pity he's got so many hands," murmurs an elderly lady, with her own
calmly folded on her lap. "They quite confuse him."

"A yard or two off his feet wouldn't be a disadvantage," chimes in the
comic man, "especially as he seems so anxious to hide them."

And then another suggests that with such a voice he ought to have been
a sea-captain. Some draw attention to the desperate way in which he is
grasping his hat. Some comment upon his limited powers of conversation.
Others remark upon the troublesome nature of his cough. And so on, until
his peculiarities and the company are both thoroughly exh