Timid people need to learn only one thing in order to overcome their (timidity). They should learn to think of others and not of themselves. Timidity is really a sort of inverted selfishness. The fact that you think deprecatingly of yourself does not alter the fact that is of yourself that you are thinking, when you shrink at the thought of meeting with strangers. Just try this experiment when you are going to a social affair of any kind, throw yourself heart and soul, into the spirit of it. Think how much you can do to make it a success. Express your pleasure in being present to the young men who speak to you. Have an enjoyable time; find somebody to talk to if it is only a lonely child. Persist in this for a short time, and you will find yourself a popular girl, with plenty of friends among the young men of your circle; and this without being in the least forward, or overstepping the bounds of modesty which all young girls wish to preserve.
-- Muriel Grace, excerpted from the column Etiquette and Deportment, McCall's Magazine for December 1911
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