Page:Book of Etiquette, Volume 1, by Lilian Eichler.djvu/308

 and before you realize it you will be calm, dignified, unafraid. All suggestion of self-consciousness will have vanished.

When a bride leaves a small country place to become the hostess in a large house in a large city, she is very likely to feel ill at ease and conscious of herself. Naturally, this makes her awkward in her manners.

Shyness is over-sensitiveness—a shrinking from observation. It causes us to worry about what others are thinking about us, and naturally it makes us morbid. Thus we are kept from appearing at our best, and in all our manners and actions we appear awkward and nervous. It is very necessary to overcome this fault if one wishes to mingle with people of the best society.

Orison Swett Marden says, "If you are a victim of timidity and self-depreciation, afraid to say your soul is your own; if you creep about the world as though you thought you were taking up room which belonged to somebody else; if you are bashful, timid, confused, tongue-tied when you ought to assert yourself, say to yourself, 'I am a child of the King of Kings. I will no longer suffer this cowardly timidity to rule me. I am made by the same Creator who has made all other human beings. They are my brothers and sisters. There is no more reason why I should be afraid to express what I feel or think before them than if they were in my own family.'"

The great inspirational writer has shown you in this little paragraph the way to overcome your self-consciousness—the foolish timidity that is robbing you of your privilege of self-assertion, of your ease and grace of manner, of your very happiness. Whenever you feel