Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/336

 ly does not imagine that others are thinking of him. If his hidden merits are accidentally discovered, the blush that suffuses his cheek is not one of painful bashfulness, but of startled humility and pleasant surprise. His manner evinces that he neither demands nor expects consideration, and consequently it has a conciliating tendency, inclining the world, so niggardly to those who claim their rights, to give modest worth its fullest due.

Let the bashful man contrast his experiences with those of the truly modest man, and he cannot close his eyes to the great truth that the secret cause of his social discomfort is a torturing self-consciousness, and that the cure lies in ceasing to speculate upon what others are thinking of him—in ceasing to think of himself at all.