e discipline of experience, and contact with the best examples of
character in the intercourse of daily life.

8. CAPTIOUSNESS OF MANNER.--While captiousness of manner, and the
habit of disputing and contradicting every thing said, is chilling and
repulsive, the opposite habit of assenting to, and sympathizing
with, every statement made, or emotion expressed, is almost equally
disagreeable. It is unmanly, and is felt to be dishonest. "It may seem
difficult," says Richard Sharp, "to steer always between bluntness and
plain dealing, between merited praises and lavishing indiscriminate
flattery; but it is very easy--good humor, kindheartedness, and
perfect simplicity, being all that are requisite to do what is right
in the right way. At the same time many are impolite, not because
they mean to be so, but because they are awkward, and perhaps know no
better."

9. SHY PEOPLE.--Again many persons are thought to be stiff, reserved,
and proud, when they are only shy. Shyness is characteristic of
most people of the Teutonic race. From all that can be learned of
Shakespeare, it is to be inferred that he was an exceedingly shy man.
The manner in which his plays were sent into the world--for it is not
known that he edited or authorized the publication of a single one
of them,--and the dates at which they respectively appeared, are mere
matters of conjecture.

10. SELF-FORGETFULNESS.--True politeness is best evinced by
self-forgetfulness, or self-denial in the interest of others. Mr.
Garfield, our martyred president, was a gentleman of royal type. His
friend, Col. Rockwell, says of him: "In, the midst of his suffering he
never forgets others. For instance, to-day he said to me, 'Rockwell,
there is a poor soldier's widow who came to me before this thing
occurred, and I promised her, she should be provided for. I want you
to see that the matter is attended to at once.' He is the most docile
patient I ever saw."

11. ITS BRIGHT SIDE.--We have thus far spoken of shyness as a defect.
But there is another way of looking at it; for even shyness has its
bright side, and contains an element of good. Shy men and shy races
are ungraceful and undemonstrative, because, as regards society at
large, they are comparatively unsociable. They do not possess those
elegancies of manner acquired by free intercourse, which distinguish
the social races, because their tendency is to shun society rather
than to seek it. They are shy in the presence of s