If my Confessions are to be harrowing, it is in this paper that they will chiefly provoke the tear of sentiment.  Other Confessors have never admitted that they are Social Duffers, except Mr. MARK PATTISON only, the Rector of Lincoln College; and he seems to have Flattered himself that he was only a Duffer as a beginner.  My great prototypes, J.J.  ROUSSEAU, and MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF, never own to having been Social Duffers.  But I cannot conceal the fact from my own introspective analysis.  It is not only that I was always shy.  Others have fled, and hidden themselves in the laurels, or the hedgerows, when they met a lady in the way—­but they grew out of this cowardly practice.  Often have I, in a frantic attempt to conceal myself behind a hedge, been betrayed by my fishing-rod, which stuck out over the top.  The giggles of the young women who observed me were hard to bear, but I confess that they were not unnatural.

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Shyness is a fine qualification in a Social Duffer, and it is greatly improved by shortness, and, as one may say, stupidity of sight.  I never recognise anyone whom I know; on the other hand, I frequently recognise people whom I never saw before in my life, and salute them with a heartiness which they fail to appreciate.  Once, at an evening party, where the Princess BERGSTOL was present, a lady, who had treated me with hospitable kindness, I three times mistook her; once for an eminent novelist, once for a distinguished philanthropist, and once for an admired female performer on the Banjo.  I carried on conversations with her in each of these three imaginary characters,—­and I ask you, is this the way to shine in Society?  You may say, “Wear spectacles”—­but they are unbecoming.  As to an eye-glass, somehow it irritates people even more than mere blindness does.  Besides, it is always dropping into one’s soup.

People are always accosting me, people who seem vaguely familiar, and then I have to make believe very much that I remember them, and to wait for casual hints.  The more I feel confident that I know them, the more it turns out that I don’t.  It is an awful thing to stop a hansom in the street, thinking that its occupant is your oldest College friend, and to discover that he is a perfect stranger, and in a great hurry.  Private Views are my particular abomination.  At one such show, seven ladies, all very handsome and peculiarly attired, addressed me in the most friendly manner, calling me by my name.  They cannot have taken me for either of my Doubles,—­one is a Cabinet Minister, one is a dentist,—­for they knew my name, The MACDUFFER of Duff.  Yet I had not then, nor have I now, the faintest idea who any one of the seven was.  My belief is that it was done for a bet.  The worst of it is when, after about five minutes, I think I have a line as to who my companion really is, then, my intelligent features lighting up, I make some remark which ruins everything, congratulate a stockbroker on getting his step, or an unmarried lady on the success of her son in the Indian Civil Service examination.