e
has then a sense of the brave and unsophisticated freshness of youth,
that believes all things and hopes all things, the bloom of which has
not been rubbed away by the rough touch of the world. It is only when
that shyness is prolonged beyond the appropriate years, when it leaves
a well-grown and hard-featured man gasping and incoherent, jerky and
ungracious, that it is a painful and disconcerting deformity. The only
real shadow of early shyness is the quite disproportionate amount of
unhappiness that conscious gaucherie brings with it. Two incidents
connected with a ceremony most fruitful in nervousness come back to my
mind.

When I was an Eton boy, I was staying with a country squire, a most
courteous old gentleman with a high temper. The first morning, I
contrived to come down a minute or two late for prayers. There was
no chair for me. The Squire suspended his reading of the Bible with a
deadly sort of resignation, and made a gesture to the portly butler.
That functionary rose from his own chair, and with loudly creaking boots
carried it across the room for my acceptance. I sat down, covered with
confusion. The butler returned; and two footmen, who were sitting on a
little form, made reluctant room for him. The butler sat down on one end
of the form, unfortunately before his equipoise, the second footman, had
taken his place at the other end. The result was that the form tipped
up, and a cataract of flunkies poured down upon the floor. There was
a ghastly silence; then the Gadarene herd slowly recovered itself,
and resumed its place. The Squire read the chapter in an accent of
suppressed fury, while the remainder of the party, with handkerchiefs
pressed to their faces, made the most unaccountable sounds and motions
for the rest of the proceeding. I was really comparatively guiltless,
but the shadow of that horrid event sensibly clouded the whole of my
visit.

I was only a spectator of the other event. We had assembled for prayers
in the dimly-lighted hall of the house of a church dignitary, and the
chapter had begun, when a man of almost murderous shyness, who was
a guest, opened his bedroom door and came down the stairs. Our host
suspended his reading. The unhappy man came down, but, instead of
slinking to his place, went and stood in front of the fire, under the
impression that the proceedings had not taken shape, and addressed some
remarks upon the weather to his hostess. In the middle of one of his
sentence