I believe that we ought to have recourse to very homely remedies indeed for combating shyness.  It is of no use to try to console and distract ourselves with lofty thoughts, and to try to keep eternity and the hopes of man in mind.  We so become only more self-conscious and superior than ever.  The fact remains that the shyness of youth causes agonies both of anticipation and retrospect; if one really wishes to get rid of it, the only way is to determine to get used somehow to society, and not to endeavour to avoid it; and as a practical rule to make up one’s mind, if possible, to ask people questions, rather than to meditate impressive answers.  Asking other people questions about things to which they are likely to know the answers is one of the shortest cuts to popularity and esteem.  It is wonderful to reflect how much distress personal bashfulness causes people, how much they would give to be rid of it, and yet how very little trouble they ever take to acquiring any method of dealing with the difficulty.  I see a good deal of undergraduates, and am often aware that they are friendly and responsive, but without any power of giving expression to it.  I sometimes see them suffering acutely from shyness before my eyes.  But a young man who can bring himself to ask a perfectly simple question about some small matter of common interest is comparatively rare; and yet it is generally the simplest way out of the difficulty.

IX

FEARS OF MIDDLE AGE

Now with all the tremors, reactions, glooms, shadows, and despairs of youth—­it is easy enough to forget them, but they were there—­ goes a power of lifting and lighting up in a moment at a chord of music, a glance, a word, the song of a bird, the scent of a flower, a flying sunburst, which fills life up like a cup with bubbling and sparkling liquor.

  “My soul, be patient!  Thou shalt find
   A little matter mend all this!”

And that is the part of youth which we remember, till on looking back it seems like a time of wandering with like-hearted comrades down some sweet-scented avenue of golden sun and green shade.  Our memory plays us beautifully false—­splendide mendax—­till one wishes sometimes that old and wise men, retelling the story of their life, could recall for the comfort of youth some part of its languors and mischances, its bitter jealousies, its intense and poignant sense of failure.

And then in a moment the door of life opens.  One day I was an irresponsible, pleasure-loving, fantastic youth, and a week later I was, or it seemed to me that I was, a professional man with all the cares of a pedagogue upon my back.  It filled me at first, I remember, with a gleeful amazement, to find myself in the desk, holding forth, instead of on the form listening.  It seemed delicious at first to have the power of correcting and slashing exercises, and placing boys in order, instead of being corrected