At the outset I would make it clear that for me the only shyness that counts, is that which is so deeply ingrained, as to have outlasted youth. It may, indeed, be physically related to that transient bashfulness which haunts so many of us in our younger days only to vanish at maturity, swift as the belated ghost at cockcrow. But unlike this common accident of growth, it is no surface-defect, but an inward stain which dyes the very fibres of the being. It may, indeed, be somewhat bleached and diminished by a timely and skilful treatment, but is become too much a part of life to be ever wholly washed away. And the unhappy step-children of nature whose inheritance it is, seldom find a deliverer good at need; for as the world draws no distinction between their grave affliction and that other remediable misery of youth, it will sanction no other treatment than banter or mockery, which does but infuse yet more deeply the mournful dye. When this fails, it leaves its victims to the desolation which according to its judgment they have wilfully chosen; for the most part ignoring their existence, but often chastising them with scorpion-stings of disdain. Yet the subjects of this scorn, sufferers as I believe from a hereditary tendency matured by neglect into disease, deserve a more merciful usage than this, and their plea for extenuating circumstances should not be too impatiently rejected. For in them what is to most men a transient ailment has thrown down permanent roots to draw a nourishment from pain: and he who is fortunate enough to be whole should think twice before he makes sport of those in this distress. To me this malady seems to arise from an antinomy between the physical and intellectual elements of the personality, from an unhappy marriage of mind and body, suffering the lower of the two partners to abase the life of the higher by the long-drawn misery of a hateful but indissoluble union. When the physical and mental natures in a man are happily attuned, there is a fair concord in his life and the outward expression of his being is an unimpeded process, to which, as to the functions of a healthy organism, no heedful thought is given. If both natures are of the finest temper, they find utterance in a noble amiability and ease of manner; if both are coarse in the grain, they blend in a naive freedom always sure of itself, the freedom of Sancho spreading himself in the duchess's boudoir. Between these two extremes there intervene a hundred compromises by which minds and bodies less equally yoked contrive to muffle the discordant notes of an inharmonious wedlock.