chronic cause of poor health in those who suffer from it.

Pushed to extremes, it is the source of a thousand nervous defects.

We have already touched upon stammering.

Unreasonable blushing is another misfortune of the timid. In drawing the
attention of one's opponents it betrays at once one's ideas and one's
fears.

Fear of this uncomfortable blushing inhibits many people from making the
most of themselves or from properly protecting their own interests.

The shame they feel on account of this inferiority leads them, as we
have seen, to seek isolation in which hypochondria slowly grows upon
them, sure forerunner of that terrible neurasthenia of which the effects
are so diverse and so disconcerting.

The man who was at the outset no more than timid, easily becomes
transformed first into a misanthrope, then into a monomaniac tortured by
a thousand physical inhibitions, such as the inability to hold a pen, to
walk unaccompanied across an open space, to ride in a public conveyance,
etc., etc.

It must not be forgotten that these crises of embarrassments always
produce extreme emotion accompanied by palpitations whose frequent
recurrence may lead to actual heart trouble.

All these disadvantages increase the sullenness of the timid, who are
overcome by the sense of their own physical weakness, which they know
has its origin in a condition of mind that they lack the power either to
change or to abolish.

All these causes of physical inferiority are unknown to the man who
appreciates the value of poise and puts it into practise.

Such a man has no fear of embarrassment in speaking. He is a stranger to
the misery of aimless blushing. If he does not always emerge victorious
from the oratorical combats in which he engages he at least has the
satisfaction of acknowledging to himself that he has not been beaten
easily or without a struggle. In short, misanthropy, neurasthenia, and
all their attendant ills, are for him unknown ailments.

One can not be too watchful against the attacks of timidity, which, like
a contaminated spring, poisons the entire existence of those who are
unable to dam up its flow.

Among the martyrdoms which are caused by it must be counted indecision,
which is one of its most frequent and most unhappy results.

The timid man can not stop at any point.

He vacillates unceasingly and takes turn by turn the most opposing
viewpoints.

It is only fair to add that he rejects them all almost as