THE BASHFUL YOUNG GENTLEMAN
We found ourself seated at a small dinner party the other day,
opposite a stranger of such singular appearance and manner, that he
irresistibly attracted our attention.
This was a fresh-coloured young gentleman, with as good a promise
of light whisker as one might wish to see, and possessed of a very
velvet-like, soft-looking countenance. We do not use the latter
term invidiously, but merely to denote a pair of smooth, plump,
highly-coloured cheeks of capacious dimensions, and a mouth rather
remarkable for the fresh hue of the lips than for any marked or
striking expression it presented. His whole face was suffused with
a crimson blush, and bore that downcast, timid, retiring look,
which betokens a man ill at ease with himself.
There was nothing in these symptoms to attract more than a passing
remark, but our attention had been originally drawn to the bashful
young gentleman, on his first appearance in the drawing-room above-
stairs, into which he was no sooner introduced, than making his way
towards us who were standing in a window, and wholly neglecting
several persons who warmly accosted him, he seized our hand with
visible emotion, and pressed it with a convulsive grasp for a good
couple of minutes, after which he dived in a nervous manner across
the room, oversetting in his way a fine little girl of six years
and a quarter old-and shrouding himself behind some hangings, was
seen no more, until the eagle eye of the hostess detecting him in
his concealment, on the announcement of dinner, he was requested to
pair off with a lively single lady, of two or three and thirty.
This most flattering salutation from a perfect stranger, would have
gratified us not a little as a token of his having held us in high
respect, and for that reason been desirous of our acquaintance, if
we had not suspected from the first, that the young gentleman, in
making a desperate effort to get through the ceremony of
introduction, had, in the bewilderment of his ideas, shaken hands
with us at random. This impression was fully confirmed by the
subsequent behaviour of the bashful young gentleman in question,
which we noted particularly, with the view of ascertaining whether
we were right in our conjecture.
The young gentleman seated himself at table with evident
misgivings, and turning sharp round to pay attention to some
observation of his loquacious neighbour, overset his bread. There
was nothing very bad in this, and if he had had the presence of
mind to let it go, and say nothing about it, nobody but the man who
had laid the cloth would have been a bit the wiser; but the young
gentleman in various semi-successful attempts to prevent its fall,
played with it a little, as gentlemen in the streets may be seen to
do with their hats on a windy day, and then giving the roll a smart
rap in his anxiety to catch it, knocked it with great adroitness
into a tureen of white soup at some distance, to the unspeakable
terror and disturbance of a very amiable bald gentleman, who was
dispensing the contents. We thought the bashful young gentleman
would have gone off in an apoplectic fit, consequent upon the
violent rush of blood to his face at the occurrence of this
catastrophe.
From this moment we perceived, in the phraseology of the fancy,
that it was 'all up' with the bashful young gentleman, and so
indeed it was.
