Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[309] by whom the shy graces of character are more easily retained than by those who mingle with the world. Yet it would be as easy to cite illustrations from those whose dealing with men was largest. Grant found it easier to command a vast army, and Lincoln to rule a whole nation, than to overcome a certain innate modesty and even shyness of nature, from which the one took refuge in a silence that seemed stolid, and the other in a habit of story-telling that hid his own emotions beneath a veil. Of the three kings of the American lecture platform in our own day, two at least-Phillips and Gough-admitted that they never appeared before an audience without a certain shrinking and self-distrust. It must be owned that this quality is not everywhere connected with conspicuous leadership, especially outside of the Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-American race. It is difficult to associate it, for instance, with Victor lingo, with Bismarck, with Garibaldi-although Mazzini must have had it, and it was most visible and lovable in Tourguenieff, as I can personally testify. But enough has been said to show that the Ignore delicate graces of character, so far as they are founded upon modesty and a spirit of self-withdrawal, are consistent with the most eminent and acknowledged greatness before the world. If this is the case even with men, why not with women, in whom the source and spring of humility lies deeper?