The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1885-11-28
SHYNGSS AS A DISEASE
The Agonies Suffered by Its Victims
The Various Forms 1t Assumes-A
Course of Treatment.

disease of shyness can rightfully under
stand the torture to which it dooms the
victims of its mysterious pain. 1t is a
disease, a pain. which takes all the
sweetness out of life, all the joy out of
pleasure all the sunshine out OF summer
1t destroys the morality of self-respect
and blurs the clear line between truth
and falsehood. reality and seeming. 1t
annihilates the physical senses making
one deaf and dumb and blind for all
the essential purposes of ears, tongue
and eyes-and reduces the mental
powers to a condition not above that of
bit of protoplastc jelly. just conscious
of existence, no more.
Shyness is one of the things which.
bred in the bone from the birth, comes
out in the flesh for all the years that
time may last Much intercourse with
the world may pare away some of the
larger excrescences and fine down some
of the sharper edges. but it is always
thereto be brought to the surface
under every new or unusual condition.
The shy girl who weeps into her
handkerchief because she has to play,
as she can-brilliantly, superbly-bAfore
folk at the breaking up of the school,
will be the shy maiden who says mo"
from the very contradictiousness of her
fear, when every fibre of her being
yearns to say "Yes"-the shy wife
who lets Misunderstanding widen
severance because she has not the
courage to question her husband and
ask him Whyp-the shy woman who
offends her dearest friends and throws
her visiting list into disorder, because she
is too timid to explain and too much
"muddled and mixed" to understand
how she appears to world that only
sees and hears and does not dissect nor
penetrate.
Even into quite old age this painful
quality keeps its hold on the character;
and that strange anomaly-a shy old
woman, or haply shy old man. for
the disease is common to both sexes
shrinks from the rude touch of strength
or the strangeness of novelty or the
shame of self-revelation, like school
girl whose nerves seem to lie on the
outside of her skin.
Shyness takes all forms and puts on
all DISCUSSES. Sometimes it masquer-
AIDES itself as rollick and loudness
sometimes as bold indifference or saucy
pertness-and the poor wretch who is
trembling in all his limbs and whose
sole wish is that the earth should open
and swallow him up like a second
korah, affects a jaunty swagger. which
he hopes will deceive those who are
watching him and convince them that
be is really a fine, brisk, bold sort of
creature, fit to hold his own against
any odds. and ready to give as much
as he takes. In heart he is moral
coward and intellectual sensitive plant.
His shyness makes him easy to be
'bluffed by any bold braggart who is
what he only appears to be-for these
make-believes collapse if handled the
right way, and their lions skin is never
quite large enough about the ears.
Sometimes he carries this masquerade
ing to the opposite extreme, and for
very fear of himself becomes an assail-
ant as rude and reckless as he is in
in reality sensitive and timid. No one
would suspect the truth who had not
already had some kind of iukling of it..
That loud voiced boaster-that contra
dictious impertinent-tha free and
easy joker-that pert travesty of pert
soubrette or a still more pert petit mai
tre-that uncomfortable porcupine, all
points and prickles, nervousp-shyp-
so nervous. so shy that he does not
know what he is saying-that she is in
fog wherein she discerns no shape OF
men nor form of thingsp
1t seems impossible!-and vet it is
only too true-and the sufferings under
gone by the unhappy beings, who, to
hide what they are, make themselves
appear what they are not. and so ex-
change a weakness for an offense, are
of the most poignant description. No
day passes wherein these shy persons
do not make for themselves needless
distress-wherein they do not plant
stupidity to reap shamefacedness and
regret What tortures they suffer
when, at night in the solitude of their
own thoughts. they go back on the
deeds of the day, and calmness produces
clearness! When they remember their
ungainly gesture as they handed the
cup, or took the chair, or shook hands
across the table, or came stumbling into
the room; when their ears re-echo with
those unlucky words, that horrible
allusion to the well known skeleton,
which, came out in a manner unawares
and without meaning, or that phrase
which was meant to be complimentary,
and was apparently impairment instead;
when they wish that they had done this
and lament that they did not do that,
its direct opposite; grieve over the good
things they might have said and just
missed; groan over the foolish words
they blurted out as if they had been stones
catapulted by some fiendish power be-
hind them; then what tortures without
name or end they undergo for all the
follies forced on them to commit by the
baleful influence of shyness!
We ought to be very tender with
naturally shy children. The agonies
those little people have to go through
they alone can understand. But those
of us who have passed through the
same ordeal can remember what we
suffered in our day of small beginnings
and unused experiences, and by our
selves we can Judge for them.
A hard handed parent ignores all this
faint and delicate tracery made by
nature, and insists on uniformity with
the rest of the young world. The
doctrine of idosyncrasy finds no favor in
eyes which would treat all characters
as Procrustes treated inches, or wash
over every picture with the same tint. A
shy, shrinking. nervous temperament is
handled with the same careless strength
of grasp as bold and fearless one; and
the result is much the same as if you
put gauze to the purpose to which you
would put cloth, or brushed butterfly
with the brush you used for a poodle.
If it is foolish to pamper shyness it is
cruel to coerce it. If we must suffer in
all training we need not suffer by ex-
cessive training nor by too rough begin
nings. We have to deal with shyness
rs with physical delicacy, and to be
tender and patient with its short
comings. We should not force a
weakly child to take the exercise
only natural to healthy, strong and
powerful one; nor should we force shy
child to moral exertion over-severe for
its constitution. In this, as in every
thing in life. we have to be guided by
common which is Just what
partisans are never famous for; and be,
tween those who would indulge shy
children in all their shrinking sensitive
ness and so let them set permanently
into this mould, and those who would