BEARDS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 778, 18 June 1954, Page 5

BEARDS

Sir-As one,who has sported a beard for well over 30 years, I was naturally ‘both interested and amused by your witty editorial.on "The Beards of Monticello" (Listener, May 28). Very true is your maxim, that "to grow a beard, in a more or less clean-shaven age, is an enterprise to be undertaken carefully." You might have added that it is also one requiring forethought and not a little courage, for the wearer of a beard in this 20th. Century must be prepared to face insult and, if necessary, to enforce respect for his hirsute adornment by heroic measures. .»I have. good cause to remember one occasion, many years ago, when I put these precepts into practice by punching the nose of a semi-drunken lout who had made unseemly reference to the subject of "whiskers," and voiced his intention of pulling them there and then. Instinctively I adopted the soldier’s slogan that attack is the better form of defence, and although I was never a boxer-my hands \

being more adaptable to the keyboard than to the gloves-I succeeded in knocking this fellow off the back of the tram on which the incident occurred, much to the astonishment of my fellowpassengers, while I affected ‘an air of nonchalance, as implying that such deeds were trifling and unimportant. My secret elation,’ however, was quickly extinguished when a_ hospital X-ray examination disclosed compound fracture of the right hand--a dismal dilemma for a professional pianist, and one from which I have never completely recovered, But at least I had the keen satisfaction of having vindicated my outward "show of masculinity," perhaps guided subconsciously by Shakespeare’s dictum: He that hath a beard is more than a youth; And he that hath none is less than a man.

L. D.

AUSTIN

(Wellington).