Page 5 Advertisements Column 2

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 272, 7 February 1928, Page 5

BETWEEN FRIENDS hear a great deal nowadays ** about people who are unwanted and superfluous, particularly if they are women, of course, and there is no doubt that this sort of depression is genuinely “in the air” in our own country, says an English writer. This is not due only or even chiefly to our large numbers of so-called superfluous women; it is due to our overcrowded condition. There are not enough jobs, there are not enough houses to go round. Women are so extraordinarily adaptable that, given a reasonably certain livelihood and a place v into which they can introduce the spirit of home, they will be moderately happy, even though unmarried. Successful marriage is the happiest state in human experience, and we are talking nonsense when we pretend that any career can be compared with it. But on sensible woman will grow wan in envy of the married merely as the married. What we all need is a greater sense of significance in life; not a definite aim, necessarily, but a conviction that the individual human life does count even in our overcrowded island. You have only to spend a few hours driving through rural France to realise that there human beings are rather exciting just because there are not many of them to the square mile. There are not many square miles of England left of which this is true, and in cities and towns we visibly struggle against each other. And yet the individual human life is a significant thing. As life goes on what do most of us really care about except the value we find in people? Granted it is mixed up with a lot that is disappointing and inferior, but it is there. We can all deepen it. Is this insignificance, superfluousness? Kindness and simplicity and the spirit of understanding which is mercy; these are the things which give us strength for the burden of the mystery of life, and in them, if anywhere, is the key to the mystery to be found.

* Sheer velvet, georgette, satin and metallic chiffon, are among the newest materials favoured by those fortunate women, who proudly boast of having found a “clever little dressmaker,” the while they keep her identity a secret, even from their dearest friends. These little dressmakers, sometimes to be found in the most unexpected places, are able, after a close inspection of models far beyond the means of their clients, to turn out wonderfullv clever copies.