One cannot notice even the dress of a woman
much given to blushing, wihout causing her face to crimson.
It is sufficient to stare hard at some persons to make them,
as Coleridge remarks, blush,--"account for that he who can."[23]
With the two albinos observed by Dr. Burgess,[24] "the slightest attempt
to examine their peculiarities invariably" caused them to blush deeply.
Women are much more sensitive about their personal appearance than men are,
especially elderly women in comparison with elderly men, and they blush
much more freely. The young of both sexes are much more sensitive on this
same head than the old, and they also blush much more freely than the old.
Children at a very early age do not blush; nor do they show those other signs
of self-consciousness which generally accompany blushing; and it is one of
their chief charms that they think nothing about what others think of them.
At this early age they will stare at a stranger with a fixed gaze
and un-blinking eyes, as on an inanimate object, in a manner which we
elders cannot imitate.
[23] In a discussion on so-called animal magnetism in `Table Talk,' vol. i.
[24] Ibid.
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