CHARM

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 52, 24 May 1927, Page 5

CHARM

A GRACIOUS GIFT “It’s a sort of bloom on a woman!” says Maggie in “What Every Woman Knows.” “If you have it you don’t need to have anything else!” (writes a woman in the “Daily Mail”). Wise Maggie!

I know a woman so richly endowed with this same “bloom” that, although she has, indeed, little else—for her worldly possessions are few—she goes through life like a beloved queen, receiving graciously, and as her due, the homage and devotion of all who come her way. Behold her on her travels in a smoky third-class carriage. Already the portly guard has singled her out for his most precious charge. He beams at her from the corridor, tells her the train is due at Paddington at 1.55 would she like a lunch-basket? Ham sandwiches? A cup of tea? She thanks him and refuses everything, but with a wistful sweetness that encourages him to think she does not really mean it, so presently back he comes again. The train thunders into Paddington. The queen alights. A bevy of porters gravitate towards her as needles to a magnet. She smiles on one of them and says to him: “Two things in the van, a basket trunk and a brown bundle.” and off goes the man helterskelter for his barrow. So by sheer unlawful witchcraft does this forunate woman skim lightly over the furrows of her life. Subtly she weaves her spells. A tinge of pathos in the voice as she asks advice of some burly official, then the disarming magic of her smile, and he is her slave. Women, too, are drawn sometimes unwillingly into her enchanted circle; and there are times when I ask myself, a trifle bitterly, “How does she do it?” When I sally forth on a shopping expedition the omnibus conductors are civil, the policemen are kind, and the shopwalkers mean to do their best. I am one of the crowd; I must take my

But when she comes, joyous, confident, smiling, it seems as if they had been waiting for her. She stirs the latent chivalry in their British blood. How does she do it? To quote Maggie again: "It’s her char-rm!”