MUNDANE MUSINGS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 25, 21 April 1927, Page 4

MUNDANE MUSINGS

“THE ETERNAL DELILAH” (Written for THE SUN.) “Dear old sprig of asparagus/’ said Joan, in her pretty little complimentary fashion t’other day, “do tell us, from out that bountiful store of manknowledge of yours, how it is that sohie women can attract and enslave men so easily. I grinned at Joan's transparency, and a-miably inquired who the elusive "he” was who had failed this time to develop a “God bless Joan and all the little bunny rabbits” form of insanity at the sight of her obvious charms. “Don’t be an idiot, my poor lamb,” snapped Joan, “you know its impossible for anyone to resist me. But that’s different. I’ve got personality plus—” added the nice child in a modest manner. “I was simply wondering about that Mrs. Donald, whom we met at Summer’s the other night. I can’t understand what on earth men see in her. I She’s not particularly brainy, or amusing, and as for looks, poor, thing, they are a minus quantity. Yet, how she does get ’em.” After Joan had gone, I sat and wondered about her amusing problem, and I’ve decided that its at least a mildly interesting one, isn’t it? One’s always hearing about other women, who easil" coolly, and with a splendidly nonchalant disregard of their rightful owners, walk off with men, dragging them helpless to their feet, and leaving them there in a sticky state of abject adoration. The women for whom men will give up position, honour, prosperity—all the comfortable, orthodox things of life — are many, as anyone must realise who reads the divorce court reports. More plentiful by far are the same kind of women, only with a higher sense of honour, perhaps it’s a higher sense of the value of their social position and a consequent unwillingness to sacrifice anything, who inevitably attract all the nicest men at parties and dances, who never have a night they don’t know what to do with, who grab off a husband even though they happen to be the plainest and youngest of a dozen sisters —who, oh but you know all the annoying things they do, don’t you. But, how do they do it? Is it that they possess some strange Masonic secret, or have they just acquired the art of being “all things to all men.” The only really-truly siren that 1 ever met at close quarters seemed to be always different. I don’t mean by that that her moods were always varying, but that with each fresh man she talked to she was as different from him as possible. To any dear, stuffy old thing, who’d vegetated for years, and never known what it was to “go gay,” she was as a breath of another world, a vivacious, dashing, nearly-naughty young woman, who made him feel his lost youth stirring in his pulses again, who meant to him for a brief half-hour all the things he’d dreamed of as a romantic boy, but had never obtained. With the man-of-the-world type, the blase. ultra-sophisticated lads, she would be demure, a retreating little violet, almost slapping them when they tried to start their usual automatic flirtations. Skilfully she would keep them at arm’s length, the while she looked quiet and sweet and soulful; then, when they were inclined to give up the chase, out would come some rather intriguing saying, that made ’em wonder whether they’d summed her up aright, after all. And so on. With each type she spelled Romance, with a capital R. She was, in short, alwavs careful to be the undiscovered country, the distant slv>re they knew nothing of, and never tne vista of cultivated fields they were all so well accustomed to. But what a hard art to practice unless one could always be granted an audience of only one! After all, every chip of the old Eve block can be tremendously charming when she’s alone with a new Adam, but to turn on a different character according to the temperament of the man you were trying to lure away from his happy little home would be an ordeal, to say the least of it, if one’s family were standing around in an awe-stricken throng, or when one was in the midst of some average teaparty. No! Methinks the chances must all come behind the scenes! And perhaps that is the secret of the eternal Delilah—that she’s always different, showing each man a glimpse of some other life than his own. After -all, the instinct to explore is pretty deeply planted in the masculine composition, Joan, my child, read that, and you'll land the mysterious lad yet! —H.M.