THE TRAGEDY OF SHYNESS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 146, 21 June 1924, Page 15

THE TRAGEDY OF SHYNESS

If Nathaniel Hawthorne were alive, there is a novel I would like to have him write, observes Dr. Frank Crane. He had the genius for describing the over-development of some one trait of character that had become morbidly super-intense, until it twisted and coloured, deformed and transformed, the whole man. He thus depicted the overactive Conscience in "The Scarlet Letter." I would like to have him take up the over-active, sense of Modesty. He could thus show us the timid shrinking boy, full of love, lifo and companionship, but too keenly sensitive; so that littio by little ho is alienated' from all his playmates, draws apart from his brothers and sisters, and oven from his mother.

11 is early lif» would thus be traced until the climax conies. He tails in love with an estimable girl, who however, has' the womanly knack of 'liberal criticism. He pours out to her all the penL-up reserves of his nature, unfolds in'a passion of confession all the inner life that has so long been hidden. She takes all quite as a matter'of cours-j. she sets him down as a very "peculiar" man, and tries to get him to fall in line with the. rest of humanity. To seen shy nature, a diffident and reserved soul, melt under the kindly warmth of appreciation and become free and candid and expansive ib like v.-ntch-ing a Uoautiful flftYirer open, into bloom,