There is no class of girls in the world so easy to get along with after they get acquainted with you, as bashful ones. And the courting them is an easy and delightful affair; they are so loving and confiding; no reserve, no distrust, no coquetting; but frank, open-hearted and generous. Even if you are unsuccessful in your suit they never mortify you in their refusal. It is generally given in so frank and candid a manner as to command your admiration.
Natural Diffidence is the result, as already stated, of certain peculiarities of constitution. There is a want of confidence in one’s self—a shrinking dread of intercourse with strangers, especially those of the opposite sex, and he, or she, can give no reason for this diffident feeling. He may be well educated; of attractive personal appearance, of good conversational abilities, and well dressed, yet from that strange feeling of natural bashfulness, so well known, yet difficult to describe, he is a timid, shrinking creature, subject to trials of which a self-reliant man has no conception. He blushes and becomes confused if suddenly addressed. His heart beats painfully at the idea of entering a well-lighted room filled with ladies and gentlemen. And this feeling is the result, in a great measure, of his small self-esteem. Your truly diffident person is of extremely sensitive, retiring disposition, and while he is apt to accord to others superiorities they do not possess, he entertains for his own abilities, personal and mental qualities, the most humble opinion. And thus he does himself great injustice and injury. He does not attain that position in society nor that success in professional or business life that he would were he not shackled by his foolish timidity—his deference to others.
A bold, self-confident man, with a mere fraction of a bashful man’s ability and attainments, will invariably distance him in the affairs of life. “Brass” always tells. The world don’t stop to analyze a man for his real merit. It takes him at his own valuation, and if a man puts a low estimate upon himself and goes through life with a hanging head and blushing face, he has small success, and less pity. The good things of this world—the successes in love, in business, in politics, &c., are invariably won by those who have a good opinion of themselves; who have faith in their special talents and abilities, and who push ahead in accordance with this faith.
There never was a truer saying than that faint heart never won fair lady. While women have a genuine admiration for the truly modest and pure-minded men, they have a genuine contempt for your chicken-hearted, bashful, tongue-tied fellows.
Although a good many screeching females in these Women’s Rights, Advanced Female days can not lay special claims to any superfluous amount of modesty, still the softer sex have not yet lost those endearing qualities of gentleness, modesty, and loving trustfulness in the opposite sex. Since that time when Eve cast her first loving glances towards robust Adam, women’s love and admiration have gone out to bold and gallant men. As she is timid and weak, so the more does she admire the qualities of strength and courage. Man is her natural protector, and she looks up to him and clings to him in love and confidence.
Women are pre-eminently romantic in all that concerns love. Her heroes are those who do brave and perilous deeds; who scorn ease and effeminacy, and who laugh at danger—captains who go down to the sea in ships and sail away over the mysterious ocean to strange, far-away lands—men who with shut jaws, gleaming eyes, and fixed bayonets go digging over fort walls, from which come unceasing flashes of fire and a pitiless rain of death.
(How the officers and men who came home from The War were honored, and almost caressed, especially by the ladies; and what a host of marriages took place among the gallant fellows!)
It has been truly said that no woman really loves who has not discovered some traits in her lover’s character that she considers noble and heroic. It is a glory for a woman to be able to be proud of her lover or husband—of his superior intellect, his dignity and strong manhood and loving care and tenderness, and it is proverbial how a true woman overlooks and endeavors to conceal the faults and weaknesses of her husband. He was her hero at marriage, and though the illusion may have passed, she still bravely tries to maintain it.