facts. You are dealing with men and women, youths and maidens, of the
same flesh and blood, mentality as yourself. You average up with
the rest of them. Why should you be afraid? Call upon your reasoning
power. Assert the dignity of your own existence. You are here by the
will of God as much as they. There is a purpose in your creation as
much as in theirs. You have a right to be seen and heard as well as
have they. Your life may be charged with importance to mankind far
more than theirs. Anyhow for what it is, large or small, you are going
to use it to the full, and you do not propose to be laughed out of it,
sneered out of it, either by the endeavors of others or by your own
fears of others. Then, when you have once fully reasoned the thing
out, do not hesitate to plunge into the fullest possible association
with your fellows. Brave them, defy them (in your own heart),
resolutely face them, and my word and assurance for it, they will lose
their terror, and you will lose your bashfulness with a speed that
will astonish you.

Closely allied to bashfulness as a cause of many worries is hyper-
or super-sensitiveness. And yet it is an entirely different mental
attitude. Hyper-sensitiveness may cause bashfulness, but there are
many thousands of hyper-sensitives who have not a spark of bashfulness
in their condition. They are full of vanity or self-conceit. Elsewhere
I have referred to one of these. Or they are hyper-sensitive in regard
to their health. They mustn't do this, or that, or the other, they
must be careful not to sit near a window, allow a door to be open,
or go into an unwarmed room. Their feet must never be wet, or their
clothing, and as for sleeping in a cold room, or getting up before the
fire is lighted, they could not live through such awful hardships.

I have no desire to excoriate or make fun of those who really suffer