LORDS OF CREATION.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 592, 14 December 1920, Page 1

LORDS OF CREATION.

MEN WHO BORE ME.

(By Meriel Isa Strange, in the Mail)

In describing the qualities and habits of men who bore me personally I am expressing the opinion of a considerable number of women known to me.

One of the worst bores I have ever met was a so-called "lady-killer." Undoubtedly he was handsome. Some of his feminine admirers thought he was a perfect type of manly beauty. His manners were perfect, in the conventional sense, and he had a soft musical voice, and a fascinating rippling laugh. But the keynote of his character was insincerity. He made a fine art of flattery, and he possessed shrewd insight into the temperaments and the tastes of the women he sought to

"kill." Men of this order are skilful in adapting their tactics to every situation. They assume seriousness when they wish to impress an earnest-mind-ed girl, and they can be charmingly frivolous in the company of shallow pretty "flappers." The man whose behaviour constantly reminds me that he regards me more as "one of the fair sex" than as a human being and his equal is another bore. He is very polite, even deferential, but he never forgets that you are a woman.

This kind of bore has a firm conviction that most women regard their sex as the chief source of power, and that the way to please a woman is by reminding her that she is a woman. Some of my friends are attracted by this playing up to their femininitv. To me this behaviour of men is

significant of an ill-concealed disdain for the "weaker sex."

The obviously "questing" species of the "lords of creation" are easily recognised by a woman of the world, and instinctively avoided. These are the men whose handshake suggests scandal and whose glance is a humiliation to womanhood. Their manners and their morals are those of the

cave-men and the Stone Age. The maternal instinct in the majority of women makes them sympathetic towards the weak, and for this reason some of us are attracted by men who are not physically robust. But many women are repelled by little men of feeble character who attempt to demonstrate their manliness by pomposity, pugnacity, and an overbalancing manner. Such men become petty domestic martinets in married life. As a rule, they choose n weak, submissive woman as a wife. Some quite "good" men can be acutely boring. I have known women who left their husbands because they were too good to live with. I don't think many men will be nble to understand what I mean by "good." There is the precise, methodical, careful, conscientious man who, somehow or other, is quite unlovable. He is often a paragon of several virtues. One esteems him, but , as Browning asks: "Wanting in what?" Many women will understand me.

I am sure of one thing—real love knows no boredom. It may bring pain as well as joy, but no boredom.