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,