Blushing.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 474, 24 May 1890, Page 6

Blushing.

Perhaps the most remarkable fact about blushing is that every person is not equally susceptible to it. Nor are the extremely modest those on whose cheeks the flush supposed to be characteristic of a retiring or sensitive disposition is most frequently or rapidly seen. Women are generally held to be the sex with whom the capacity for blushing lingers longest; politicians the order of mankind who soonest lose the power .of expressing any visible signs either of shyness or of shame. But most of us get less and less apt to blush as years go on, and some people—and those it ought in charity to be remarked by no means the mos t self-suffi-cient—never blush outwardly, whatever they may do inwardly. In the same way, while many faces get red with fear and anger, others grow blanched under the like emotions. In short, blushing is, to a large extent, a matter of idiosyncracy—of constitution, though it is. also to no inconsiderable degree a habit, acquired by the artifical notions of civilised society. -Young children who have never been taught to regard this action as 4 naughty,’ or that as * nice, find no need for it. Whole races of men, neither particularly virtuous nor markedly vicious, but who habitually go without clothes, are almost deficient in the capacity; while others, Darwin tells us, often blush over their arms and chests, and even down to their waists, the action being generally accompanied by the face being turned aside and the eyes cast down or restlessly moved. Modesty, indeed,.is to a large extent, like honesty and other virtues, a matter of lati* trade.