BETWEEN FRIENDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 891, 7 February 1930, Page 5

BETWEEN FRIENDS

SELF-PRAISE Sell-praise, we are told when we are children, is no recommendation. So most of us decide to commend ourselves to our fellows, which, being human, we are naturally very anxious to do, by a charming silence on the subject of our good points. There are exceptions. There are people who do not blush to tell us of their business ability, their intellect, their astonishing courage, their fine sensitiveness. Some girls, too, are very brave about their beauty. They can refer to it with as great an air or detachment as if they were speaking of Helen of Troy'. We smile at them. But we are all funny. There are attractive women who never say a word about their owu “looks,” but from the very way in which they never say it W'e are well aware of their superb confidence in their power to delight. They' are often quite as transparent as the more naive woman who repeats to us the compliments which have been paid to her. and which, by the way, in many Instances, we should never doubt have been paid. Vanity is nearly' alway's a little nervous, a little apprehensive; it will not leave enough to our intelligent. observation. There is also the obstina.te, exasperating vanity of the woman who will run herself down. Sometimes she hopes to be contradicted, but this is not the true analysis of her case. Rather she wants to show us that she is alert enough to be ready for anything that w'e may- be horrid enough to think, and that she can, in fact, get there first with it. Why' she imagines that we want to think unkind things of her is a mystei-y. This malady is nearly alway-s the defect, often the only one, of people of real intelligence and sincerity, and the greatest possible appreciation of the goodness and the charm of others The really Inferior are never conscious of inferiority; the commonplace are the complacent. In each of us there is something to catch the eye of the Comic Spirit. We are all a little absurd in one way or another, whether we know' It. or not!