Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1884 — Stage-Fright and Diffidence. [ARTICLE]

Stage-Fright and Diffidence.

Stage-fright is an ailment by no means confined to novices in public speaking. Charles Dickens, after many years of both reading and acting before large and critical audiences, told a friend that at times just before going on the platform, he lost his voice altogether, from a certain inexplicable terror which even to himself seemed ridiculous. The words literally “stuck in his throat.” Sheridan, in the very height of his power os an orator, it is stated was never free from these sudden spasms of nevous tear; which is the more remarkable as his effects were carefully prepared, and there was little spontaneous fire in his oratory.

When Madame Cataline was the first cantatrice in the world, she was seized with a sudden trembling and chill when coming before a London audience, and was forced to retire for a moment to recover herself. It was caused by a familiar face- known to her’Sn her childhood. “It vas not ze Inglese,” she said. “It vas zat leetle Antonia in de gallery vat make me a foolish child again. ” Almost every young man on his first entrance into society has experienced the nameless horror of stage-fright in a modified form. No matter how mUnly or bold the young fellow mw be when with his companions, there have been times when the presence of a single good, motherly woman or two or three silly girls reduced him to imbecility. Cold shivers ran 4own his back, his legs and arms grew suddenly heavy and unmanageable, fiis brain was paralyzed with the terrible question, “What to say next ?” It is not, as a rule, the most modest men or those who have an humble opinion of their own social powers, who suffer from this torturing weakness of diffidence. It is usually lhe self-con-scious young man, whose own personality weighs him down. “As soon as a lad finds out his own insignificance,” said Sidney Smith, “he will lose his diffidence.” Another writer in the same spirit advises a bashful boy to “consider before entering a room, that nobody in it cares a groat whether he is a Solomon or an idiot. ” But the self-conscious young man is not likely to be convinced of his own insignificance so easily. A more practical help iq cases of this paralyzing diffidence is for the victim to at least assume an interest in his companions and their affairs. He will thus start a subject of engrossing interest to them, in the discussion of which he and his spasm of stupidity will be unnoticed. Self-love is so invariable a of human nature that it can always be relied on in an emergency.— Youth’s Companion.