NEVER PRETEND TO KNOW.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 153, 24 July 1909, Page 4

NEVER PRETEND TO KNOW.

WJIY MAKE-BELIEF IS FOLLY. AVhen you don't know, don't pretend to know. Ignorance is no disgrace, but pretended knowledge ie hypocrisy—and hypocrisy is disgraceful. Of course, when you are very young you hate to appear ignorant of a subject which seems perfectly familiar to those about you, but if you are wise you will acknowledge your ignorance ! latlicr than pretend to be knowing, for it is the easiest thing in the world to be found out in such pretence. MISREPRESENT TIIEIR SOCIAL POSITION. , A funny little form of pretence which many women indulge in and which it seems quite impossible to explain save as a weakness of human nature is to misrepresent their social position when they are away on a holiday. They will talk volubly of the society leaders they know so well, they will describe the round of social gaiety which they enjoy, and one would get the impression from them that they are the very smartest set in their native town. It turns out, too often, that their accurate description of the society leaders was drawn from the papers, and that the round of gaiety existed only in their imagination. To pretend to know people whom one does not know, and to pretend to go to places where one was never invited, seems the very fieight of silliness; but lots of women <lo it. I remember, at boarding-school (remarks a writer in an English journal), a certain girl named Rhoda Somethhg-or-other who was one of these universal know-it-alls. PROVED HERSELF THE MOST IG-; NORANT GIRL IN THE SCHOOL. At first wo accepted Rhoda's cleverness for a fact—and then we began to euspcct that she was fooling us. With this in mind, we set various traps for her, and, greatly to our amusement, she fell into them promptly. We would invent fictitious book-titles and ask Rhoda if she had read the book—and she always had. Then we would detail the plot and describe the characters—yes, Rhoda remembered them perfectly. At last she proved herself to us the most ridiculously ignorant girl in the» school, and her popularity waned abruptly. (Pretended knowledge is just that form of insincerity which most hurts the character of the pretender; and what good can it be, since the world does not measure you for what you know, nor do you win friends by wisdom only? Don't .pretend; it's right for the cliil dren in their play, but it is ridiculous in a grown-up.