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The Disquietude of Being Liked
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (March 20, 1909) : 27
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      It is, on inspection, surprisingly great. Approval is something to be met with courage, and approbation requires a great deal of serious thought. What shall one do with it, where store it? It might be safer to return it; that would at least prevent its being lost. It is almost too much of a responsibility, and its very value arouses the suspicion in your mind that perhaps it was wrongly addressed. These deluded persons who like you ought to be warned. You wish to behave fairly and you do not want to lose a charming appreciation, yet the fact of their so actively liking you suggests that they have somehow been misinformed. yet the fact of their so actively liking you suggests that they have somehow been misinformed. You are so enchanted with their amiability that you are particularly anxious they should not be deceived. They must know the truth. It may be a little difficult to tell them, as you are uncertain about it yourself; but some general term, dark but descriptive, such as “dub” or “worm,” would make you more comfortable and show them how wrong they had been in their judgment. Of course if, after setting them right, they continue to like you — ah, that is something you cannot be held responsible for. You have obviously done all that could be expected If they go on, it may be pig-headedness; but it is no fault of yours.
      When you in turn show that you like people, the nervous eyes and restless manner of the object of your regard should prove to you that your leaning has been observed and that the object is in consequent stew and quandary. Their first and best instinct is to run. If they have been so unfortunate as to make a strikingly good impression they are no longer at ease in your presence, and wish to leave before they wreck the quite unintentional good they have accomplished. They have all the air of groaning, “Lord! now I have done it!” They will think gratefully of you at a distance, even tenderly and fondly; but the suggestion that they meet you — this fills them with terror, and they rush instead to spend the evening with some one who accepts them absent-mindedly or even more or less dislikes them. In such company they are excited, happy, full of hope. At any moment they may make a conquest. There are such possibilities in a person who dislikes one. Their conversation is intoxicating: the conversation of an intelligent person, for they say frankly you bore them, which settles definitely their intelligence. You bore yourself. Their agreeing with you proclaims their calibre.
      They dislike you? Good heavens! the perspicuity of the creatures is amazing. You would like to discuss it with them and congratulate them on their cleverness. You admire them, find them congenial, and, with the perversity that is in you, you cannot desist from an effort to spoil them, to banish them from your circle — in other words, to make them like you. You idiotically hover around the flame of their aversion, and the flapping of your silly wings extinguishes it.
      There are many niceties in being liked, and, as they are things closely connected with us, we feel an avid, almost savage, interest in them. We dive down into a liking and bring up a cause. We think we are about to prove our advocates in the wrong, and we can hardly contain our pleasure. We have the wherewithal to trip them up, and it naturally makes us hilarious. We dangle the cause before them and ask, tauntingly: “Is that the reason you like me? Well, I’ve fooled you there, because I haven’t it. You put that in yourself. It has nothing to do with me.” “Is that the reason you like me? Well, I’ve fooled you there, because I haven’t it. You put that in yourself. It has nothing to do with me.” And that being a clinching argument, we sit back convulsed with mirth and wait to see how the people who liked us are now going to behave. They are nonplussed, at a loss what to say, which only makes us rub our hands and chuckle. We have them now. It is ten to one that they will not have a word to say in defence of their mad preference. They are silent for a moment; then: “I’ve begun liking you and I haven’t time to stop, so, if you haven’t that characteristic, I’ll have to like you, anyway. Now, please do not upset my plans again.” Their stubbornness discourages us, naturally, but their weak-mindedness appeals to us, and it is easily seen that they are in need of our protection. If they are going about liking every worthless creature, it is high time some one looked out for them. We constitute ourselves their guard, and, though it may appear to be reciprocated affection, it is nothing more or less than concern for the irresponsible. Every time they are on the point of liking any one we remind them that they liked us, and remark severely that one blunder is all we think they should permit themselves. This, it may be imagined, makes them very careful.
      Boys have been driven away to sea because their mothers so adored them. Boys have been driven away to sea because their mothers so adored them. They have tried being wayward, but it is an exhausting business to perpetually remain the worst boy in the village when one’s inclinations draw one to a quieter life. Going to sea is their only chance of leading a harmless existence, and, at the same time, leaving the impression firmly behind in a mother’s mind that one is a good-for-nothing. To recall the really nice youngsters who have strained their powers of mischievousness in an effort to down their mothers’ exalted idea of them is quite a saddening reflection. One understands perfectly that a boy could not sleep in peace while some one held the belief that his virtues existed, though hidden. Rather than remain in an atmosphere where persons who should have known better are obtrusively proud of him, the wrapping of a few necessities in a pocket handkerchief, the stealing over moonlit roofs, and sullen start for the nearest seaport is preferable, though difficult and chilling. The consciousness that ships do not agree with him, and that homesickness will surely assail him, does not make him waver in the least. It is imperative for his growth that he be where people do not think too well of him, and his infantile, unwilling profanity as he is overtaken is a last useless effort to get there.
      There used to be a trial known as living on a pedestal, and it was an admittedly unsteady perch. But the phrase implied that one allowed oneself to be placed on the alarming thing, and even made a half-hearted attempt to balance there, smiling debonairly as though lounging comfortably and with plenty of room to stretch. Your hurried returns after excursions to lower and happier regions you covered up with affable bows to any one approaching on bent knees. The revolt from this form of punishment has been so great that we are now on the extreme and still heated tail of it. It was in the very beginning of things that we refused to be boosted up to the desired heights, and men still have a deep-rooted dislike of pedestals even as innocuous pieces of furniture. They know there is only a potted palm atop, but they do not like the things about. Memories disturb them, and they see no reason for thinking decorative a thing that so unpleasantly reminds them. Even after people walked jauntily on a level with their inferiors they had trouble with wives and husbands who possessed horrid measuring eyes. Even after people walked jauntily on a level with their inferiors they had trouble with wives and husbands who possessed horrid measuring eyes. They knew, in spite of the silence maintained, that the owners of those eyes thought they, the objects of their admiration, would be becoming to a slight elevation. There is still in the air a latent desire to look up, and such is the feeling left by the reaction that people, provoked by the mildest glance of liking, shout: “Don’t you do it! I’m not anything you think I am. Oh, oh, oh! I won’t have it! I like it, but don’t you dare do it! I know you. If I give you an inch you’ll take an ell and put me on top of it. It doesn’t matter if you have taken a fancy to me. may never be like this again. Don’t you let it raise your hopes. Get out! I won’t talk to you. It will make a precedent, and then where will I be? You’ll hold it over me and enlarge upon it, and presently you will tell me I’m a conversationalist, and I’ll have to be a conversationalist always. Go away! Go away! I don’t trust you!” It is only after years of assuring them that you expect nothing of them, that you believe not one of the pleasing things you have heard regarding them, and that personally you know them for a rather mediocre human, that they consent to let you like them, and show gradually all the qualities they warned you so rigorously they did not have.
 

The idea is elaborated in “Why Chivalry Is Nipped in the Bud,” encountered in in The Kindergarten-Primary Magazine 28:8 (April 1916) : 234
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That essay is one in The Woman Who Saw series, described at the index page (link).
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