JUST GUSH

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 224, 10 December 1927, Page 22 (Supplement)

JUST GUSH

How prone we are, even the most restrained of us, to gush. There is more of it, no doubt, in the make-up of the sentimentalist, but there’s a modicum in most of us. As a matter of fact, it is hard to restrain. There is precious little difference between what we superiors disdainfully call gush and that concentrated and restrained attitude which is, for the want of a better rvord, nothing more or less than enthusiasm. And why should ive scorn the gusher? Granted that it does seem to be somewhat unnatural; but doesn't it arise from a real natural desire to be friendly? It may seem, at times, to be pure and unadulterated bathos, but it toere unwise, not to say snobbish, to deny those simple souls who indulge in it the joy that it brings them. It does one good to let them have their play at being overwhelming in their effusiveness to us. To deny them, to sniff at their unsophisticated pleasure, is to do them a real and possibly a lasting harm. That gushing may appear to us as ultra-melodramatic is no justification of our superior attitude. It is a far better thing to smile at the trifling peccadilloes of those less caltured people, although it is reasonable to suppose that they may even have, deep down in their hidden personality, a world of culture which, if we would call it up, would surprise us. Gush may be obnoxious to us. On the other hand, it may be the life line of hundreds of good and well natured people.