CONSIDER APPEARANCES FOR THEY COUNT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1155, 7 October 1913, Page 4

CONSIDER APPEARANCES FOR THEY COUNT.

(By Charles C. Nixon, in '‘Business Philosopher.”) Do appearances count ? Verily they do! For instance ; Let your whiskers grow for three or four days aud then let a stranger or a distant friend appear in your presence ; you know that at once you feel a deep sense of gross carelessness with a resulting deeper sense of personal unfitness within yourself! Put yourself in the unbecoming, uncouth raiment of the labourer. Dou his cap. You’ll be astonished at the result. View it in the minor, and you’ll mighty soon begin to think that clothes do go a long way towards making the man. A life insurance solicitor, neat in all other particulars is careless about his teeth. It cost him the loss of a five thousand dollar application that I know of, and, probably, a great many' others because of the offence given by his unkept, dirty, brown teeth. Three porters in a small city met the stranger-traveller at the depot. Little difference could he see in favour of one as against the other. The three buses they managed were all of the same construction, but one had recently been decorated and trimmed. He chose this ’bus. It took him to a good hold —not to the best, as he had anticipated. Did you ever notice how you can size up a business man by the appearance of bis desk? When you find one with papers all-awry, all confusion, bank on it there is something wrong with that man’s way of thinking. How different it is from the big efficient executive ! Do you realise what even the appearance or suspicion of your keeping “loose” company would do to you in the estimation of people whose opinions really count? Even the appearance ol such a thing would damn you for time to come. How poor an impression you get of a man you meet when he cannot look yon straight in the eye ! It is all in the appearance. But what a difference in the im pression over what it might otherwise be. It is remarkable bow we are judged by little evidences showing lack of good breeding ! Uncouth manners, especially at the table — soup takeu with a sucking noise—oh ! you know the rest —but this all goes iu the classification as appearances. Neatness and personal tidiness. My ! how these do count! It'll pay you to be thoughtful of these things. They all have to do with appeal ance. Aud appearances verily do count ! Aud oh, how mercilessly we are sized up by the appearance of our clothes ! The bead of an important men’s clothing and haberdashery establishment whom I saw wearing a badly frayed collar while on duty, fell immediately in my estimation from a place be never can again regain. If you have any doubt about your bat as to its becoming you, or of your need of a new one, get a new one by all means! Six days after acting on Ibis advice a young advertising solicitor in a small city was interviewed by a representative of a metropolitan daily. He made the right impression, aud got a dandy job. It might have been different bad he been wearing the old hat, although not shabby in any sense, but slightly out of date. Take it even with the farmers, aud personal appearances count for much. An institute speaker came on to the platform, and said that he was “only a farmer.” His clothes were seedy. His knees were bagged. Those iu the audience, although they themselves were farmers, took him at his word ! He thereafter wielded little of the favourable influence, which he had it within him to carry. As a matter ol fact, we are all judged aud placed largely according to our appearances. Let us stand aside and see ourselves go by. Having noticed weak places, let us set about to strengthen them, for big and sure will be the reward.