courageous, unembarrassed, at your ease in any surroundings. Constantly suggest courage and heroism to this inner self. Stoutly deny that you are timid, cowardly, afraid to speak or to be natural in public or before strangers. Assert that you are brave, that you are not afraid to do anything that it is right and proper you should do.

Practice walking about among your fellows as though you were brave and self-confident, perfectly sure of yourself, as capable of carrying on a conversation creditably, or entering a room gracefully as you are of discharging your daily duties.

If you are cursed with self-depreciation, which is a crime; if you are inclined to efface yourself, just imagine that you are a Roosevelt, for instance, or some one who has sublime confidence in himself, a powerful self-assurance, some one whom no situation fazes; who acts fearlessly and without embarrassment on all occasions. Walk about the streets with the feeling that you are playing the part of such a man, with head up, straightforward look, and courageous bearing. Think of yourself as a person of importance in your community, one who is looked up to, whose opinion is valued, and who will always get attention, a respectful hearing.

If you are ambitious to become a singer, a public speaker, or something else demanding a great deal of poise and self-confidence, but are too timid to assert yourself, too timid to push your way before the public, practice impersonating some one

who comes nearest your ideal of a great singer or orator, or whatever else you wish to be.

I know a music teacher who cures his scholars of shyness and self-depreciation in this way. He tells them to stand daily before a mirror and talk to themselves something like this: "I am Caruso (or Nordica), the great singer. I am going to show the world that I have unusual talent. I was born to sing, and I shall not allow a miserable diffidence, a cowardly fear of standing up before a number of people just like myself, to strangle my talent and rob me of my birthright."

People who are always sneaking in and taking a back seat in every situation in life are never leaders. If you would succeed, you must develop the qualities of leadership, and you never can do this if you always stay in the background.

The world will take you at your own estimate, and if it always sees you in the rear it will take it for granted that you belong there, that you are there because you haven't the ability to push to the front. You must push yourself if you expect to get to the front, for nobody will pull you forward.

Why not sit down by yourself and take account of the things you are missing, the doors that are closed to you, the things you are barred from be'cause of your timidity, your hindering bashfulness? Try it, and then have a good heart-to-heart talk with yourself. Say, "I don't propose to make a daub of what the Creator intended for a master

piece just because of this sensitiveness, which I have been encouraging all these years. I am going to overcome it. I am going to push to the front, I am going to force myself into the van, no matter how it pains me, no matter if I do seem forward and bold. I know that it is the only remedy for my defect. I am going to show people that I am not the failure, the nobody, the defective, deficient person they take me for. I am going to show them that I have qualities which will force me to the front.

"I know that the other half of myself has been waiting for me, waiting in the background all these years, waiting to help me; half or more than half of my ability has been waiting to be discovered, to be brought out and used. Now I am going to bring it out, I am going to call out my reserves, I have kept in the background long enough. I am going to battle for freedom, for victory over my weakness. I shall not allow one little weak link in my ability chain to thwart my ambition, to ruin my career. I don't propose to go through the world with the reputation of being 'a weakling,' 'a timid, sensitive fool.' I don't care how it hurts me, I am going to push my way to the front, I ain going to assert myself. Hereafter I shall never shrink from any situation, any responsibility which will tend to call me out, which will force me to use my ability. I am going to stand for something in my community. I have been a shy,

timid, sensitive nonentity long enough. Now I am done with the whole business. It has hampered my career long enough. I am a different person, and hereafter my friends will see the difference. They will no longer find me hanging around the outskirts of things, taking a back seat. They will find me at the front. I don't care what people think of me. That shall no longer affect my conduct. I shall henceforth live my own life in my own way. I am going to step out of the crowd and do my own thinking, and if people don't like it I don't care. I am supported and upheld by the Power that has made, and that sustains, all things. In Him I live and move and have my being, and the more I rely on Him the stronger I am, the freer from timidity and self-consciousness. I am what I am strong, free, courageous, unfettered by any weakness. I am God's child. I partake of His strength. I am one with Him, and therefore qualified to carry myself with grace and dignity in any and every situation."

A young man of great ability, who had suffered for years, up to the time he was graduated from college, from the most intense shyness, rid himself of it by heart-to-heart talks of this sort. He was so thin-skinned, so sensitive, so timid and self-conscious that he was never at ease, never himself in the presence of strangers or those who did not know him well. He dared not get up to speak or take part in a debate; recitations were torture

to him; he could not meet or speak to a girl without blushing and stammering and making himself ridiculous; and at table I have seen him overturn his soup or coffee in his lap or on the table cloth, and make all sorts of foolish, awkward slips and blunders just because of his supersensitiveness and timidity.

This young man is now in a prominent position which he never could have filled had he not made up his mind to get rid of his weakness, which at one time had threatened to bury his splendid ability and make his fine natural qualities of no avail, so far as material matters were concerned.

The great trouble with most sensitive, timid people is that they are victims of what we might call "a feeling of separateness." They seem to regard themselves as separate units, without any real vital connection with the great Source of their being. Although they may have a vague sort of idea that they are made in God's image, yet they do not have an abiding sense of their inseparableness from Him, of the strength that is theirs if they only claim and use it. That is, they minimize the God in them, their divine qualities and attributes. They act as if they were not conscious of their unity with Him, as if they thought their strength came from outside, that it is something put into them rather than a living, throbbing connection with their Maker.

When these people are convinced of their abso