TERRIBLY BASHFUL.

Te Aroha News, Volume VIII, Issue 489, 16 July 1890, Page 4

TERRIBLY BASHFUL.

Noted Men YY ho Were Confused in tiie - Presence of the Opposite Sex.

A writer in the Boston ‘Journal ’ declares that he knows it for a fact that the Hon. Caleb Cushing, who, with the exception of the Hon. Rufus Choate {pa}' noble fratnim), was the best man to sit and listen to he has ever been acquainted with, was substantially dumb in the society of v'omen. Ho either did not know how to talk to them, or ho would not, and he could

scarcely look in the face of ono of them without blushing. He could not look them fairly in the eyes, in fact, nor could he men either, for that matter. There seemed to be an unaccountable timidity and shrinking about him, as there was even about Choate himself, great man as he was. And the writer would remark, in passing, that he remembers, as to the latter, that one evening at one of the large hotels in Boston thero was a reunion, for some purpose, of the graduates of Harvard College in and about Boston, and Choate was ono of the invited guests. The late brilliant Josiah Quincy, jr. (as ho was then), presided at the table with his usual inimitable grace and piquancy. While the company were assembling the writer (then a very

young man) wa3 standing by himself in a

corner, when Choate came in, with a slouchy gait and head down, looking as confused as a schoolboy, and, catching a glimpse of the writer, he rushed eagerly toward him, and, grasping his arm, said substantially: ‘You must help me up to the committee,’ who were standing in the hall receiving the guests. Wo had only advanced a few steps, however, when Choate, being discovered, was pulled hither and thither by hosts of hands, and the writer was left again to commune with himself, and with others like him and of his own ago, who happened to be standing near ; not, however, before he had ventured modestly to remark to Choate how surprised lie was that a man of his experience and distinction should be at all desirous of thus walking under cover, as it were. And I have stated in a previous paper how he always avoided as much as possible the eyes of men, and how, when walking from his office to his house, he preferred to walk through lanes and the narrowest rather than through the most crowded streets. He was very peculiar in this particular. I have it from authority which cannot be questioned that Mr Cushing once, at an evening party in Nowburyporb, attempting to make himself agreeable, it is to be presumed, said to a pretty, bright eyed girl of seventeen or eighteen summers, and quite distinguished for her beauty and accomplishments in the circle of her young admirers : ‘ Pray Miss , can you tell me how love begins ?’ And she instantly replied, with a merry twinkle and a smile : * Why, with L, of course,’ thus discomfiting the distinguished scholar and statesman and getting the laugh of the bystanders upon him.