MR A. C. BENSON ON SHYNESS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 408, 9 July 1908, Page 4

MR A. C. BENSON ON SHYNESS.

In the Cornhill Magazine this month, Mr A. C. Benson discourses on shyness, which he has no doubt is “ one of the old primitive, aboriginal qualities that lurk in human nature,” which ought to have been, but has not been uprooted by civilisation. Of course, there is the person who has never known shyness, and who always says that it is ‘‘all self - consciousness,” and comes from thinking about oneself. Of such was Tennyson, who recommended thinking of the Stella spaces as a cure for shyness ; and of such, also, was the lady who recommended a shy girl to think of Eternity. Mr Benson seems to have been sufficiently a prey to shyness himself not to believe much in these remedies. DIVKKSITIKS OK SHYNKSS. There is, first, the shyness of childhood, he says ; then that of adolescence, which has often a certain charm ; and there is often the shyness of adult life : The shyness of early youth is a thing which springs from an intense desire to delight, and impress, and interest other people, from wanting to play a far larger and brighter part in the lives of everyone else than anyone in the world plays in anyone else’s life. ‘‘l am sure,” concludes the writer, ‘ ‘ that the one way to train young people out of the miseries of shyness is for older people never to snub them in public, or make them appear in the light of a fool. A merciless elder who inflicts a public mortification is terribly unassailable and impregnable.”

THE SHY ADUET. The shy person, if he will only observe others, thinking what they may like, asking the right questions, and saying the right things, may be not merely not unpopular, but highly popular. On the other hand, if he takes refuge in the critical and fastidious attitude, he may be a social terror, like an elderly relative instanced by the writer, who was a man of wide interests and accurate information, but a perfect terror in the domestic circle. He was too shy to mingle in general'talk, but sat with an air ot acute observation, with a dry smile playing over his face ; later on, when the circle diminished, it pleased him to retail the incautious statements made by various members of the party, and correct them with much acerbity. There are few things more terrific than a man who is both speechless and distinguished. I have known several such, and their presence lies like a blight over the most cheerful party.