He confessed to Mavis that the sweetest thing in his success was the feeling of being no longer disliked.
"Oh, Will, you never were disliked."
"But that's just what I was. And I begin to get a glimmer of the reason why. I was reading an article in Answers last week, and it seemed as if it had been written specially to enlighten me. It was about sympathy. The author, who didn't sign his name, but was ev'dently a man of powerful int'lect, said that without understanding you can't sympathize; and he went on to show that without sympathy the whole world would come to a standstill."
"Ah," said Mavis, "that's the sort of difficult reading that you like. It's too deep for me."
"It's plain as the nose on one's face, come to think of it. Sympathy is the key-note. It enables you to look at things from both sides--to put yourself in another man's place, and ask yourself the question, What should I be thinking and doing, if I was him?--I should say if I was he. In the old days I was very deficient in that. A fool just made me angry. Now I try to put myself in his place." He paused, and smiled. "Perhaps you'll say I'm there already--a fool myself."
"Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that;" and Mavis smiled too. "Not quite a fool, Will."
He went on analyzing his characteristics, talking with great interest in the subject, and after a didactic style, but not with the heavy egoistic method that he had often employed years ago.
"No, I never remarked that."
"You know," he said presently, "in spite of all my bounce, I was a shy man.
"It's the fact, Mav. And my shyness came between me and others. I couldn't take them sufficiently free. I wanted all the overtures to come from them, and I was too ready to draw in my horns if they didn't seem to accept me straight at what I judged my own value. For a long while now it has been my endeavor to sink what was once described to me as my pers'nal equation. I don't think of myself at all, if I can help it; and the consequence is the shyness gets pushed into the background, my manner becomes more free and open, and people begin to treat me in a more friendly spirit."
And he wound up his discourse by returning to the original cause of satisfaction.