Soft mannered.

Bruce Herald, Volume IX, Issue 801, 9 May 1876, Page 7

Soft mannered.

There are three kinds of natures which take on themselves softness of manner and gentleness of touch — the natures with hands of steel, curved, sharp, cruel, wounding, well covered by velvet gloves ; those with hands of bran and pith, wax and putty, mere dummies without the power of grip or holding in them ; and those with hands of honest human flesh and blood, soft, warm, responsive, yielding, but with a serviceable framework of bone and muscle beneath, which when required can hold its own, and, if yielding on some occasions can be defensive and repellant on others. These are the three most noteworthy types of the hand that lies hidden beneath the velvet glove of smooth appearance and delicate texture — the characters to be found under the veil of a soft mannered and a noticeably gentle exterior.

Of the cruel hands of steel beneath their velvet gloves history shows us many examples, and personal experience adds a few more. Who does not know the quick-witted man of dulcet voice and mild of face, with a flattering manner and a gracious bearing, who says cutting things in honeyed accents, and whose sarcasms, couched in choice English, and fenced about with words of praise, lay bare your quivering nerves, and give you as much torture as the flaying knife ? His velvet touch leads you gently on till you are brought to the brink of the conversational abyss, which he has foreseen, and in all likelihood created for you 5 when he hurls you down to the lowest depths of inteUectual absurdity, and leaves you not a foothold whence you can make good your position. Crafty, clever, soft, cruel, he is the vainpire?bat of society, whose flattering touch first lulls you to security, and whose ruthless fangs then- wound you to the quick. We all know him more or less intimately, We have all writhed under those steel claws of his, struck with such, deadly aim from beneath the velvet pads ; and we have all wished that we could have exchanged those polished blades for a broad-backed bludgeon, however brutal, if only potent; seeing that honesty and brutality are better than hypocrisy and softness, and that an open, foe, however formidable, is to. be preferred to an enemy who creeps to the attack unperceived, and strikes without warning. But a man of this stamp would be nothing if he were not soft 5 and his sarcasms would lose all their point if they were not delivered in elegant EDglisb, with a glozing envelope of insincere praise. The woman, too, who isj the double of this mild-mannered, soft-voiced man — the woman who has a willowy form and for the most part an infantile smile and a chronically surprised look, who calls you <'d.ear" on, a ahorjj acquaintance, and.

who professes the most intense affection on the earliest possible notice — what a hand of steel she carries beneath her velvet ! With the skill of an Indian scout she strikes the trail of all your weaknesses, all your susceptibilities ; and she spares you nothing of what she finds. Her range passes from the smallest to the most important matters of your life, and she has an equal power of humiliation and of ruin. She praises your ugliest dress as the most becoming thing you wear, and when you are looking your worst declares you are at your best; if you have a stain or a fracture, a bit of makeshift or of mistake, her busy fingers pluck it from its decent obscurity, and, perhaps, under pretence of encomium, display it as the most prominent part of your attire. She tells you how your dearest friends, those on whose affection and fidelity you rely as on your own life, yesterday, canvassing your character, pronounced you deceitful, cold-hearted, ungrateful, and selfish ; but she says, in her sweet way, that she took your part, and assured them they were mistaken ! It was only manner, only appearance, she said ; and though you certainly might be called by some ungrateful, and what you had done did really look like deceit, yet she impresses it on you that she insisted on this as mere manner, only appearance, and fought stoutly against the theory of reality. And you, poor dear, who had not an idea that your worst enemy could have accused you of these faults, you whose life is transacted with single intentions, openly, sincerely, and who, believing in the simplicity you practise, thought these friends of yours true to the backbone, as true to you as you are to them ! But how can you be angry when your soft-mannered friend tells you all this so sweetly, inflicting her wounds with so delicate a touch, if so deadly an aim, and rasping the sore in a voice so musical and with words so nicely framed ? Even if you were angry, you would find her quicker than you at fence ; and the more you tried to parry her blows, the more deeply you would be struck. If she tells you that she has seen the beloved of your heart riding this morning in the park with your most dreaded, most abhorred rival, and that she quite considers it an engagement from all she noted, can you turn round on her and say that she says this only to wound you, and that in fact she lies ? Society does not allow us to tell each other that we lie even when we do. We have to go through our allotted pantomime of pretence, and accept as real what we know to be only sham — a ghost made out of a turnip and lighted lanthorn, and hung about with rusty chains to frighten and bewilder us. This is the kind of women who, if you are \ unavoidably late, receives you with un- , ruffled graciousness of manner, with silken cordiality of speech, but who orders dinner to be served, in a loud voice as soon as you enter, to make you feel from the first moment that your offence has been bitter if she has been gracious. All through the dinner she makes apologies to your neighbors for the culinary ruin which you have caused. . . .

Then those hands of wax and putty, bran and pith — those weak flabby-minded creatures who are all oil and honey to everyone alike ; who cannot uphold the most sacred cause in the presence of its enemieß ; nor defend their dearest friends when attacked by their most unreasonable foes ; nor maintain their own selfrespect ; nor do anything but give themselves up as inert masses to be manipulated according to will — they are to be ! pitied, poor, contemptible, stuffed pincushions ; contemptible things generally are to be pitied, for there are times when they suffer — even they ! The same to all persons alike, submitting unresisting to all men's handling, rude or rough, base, insulting, tyrannous as it may be, they are human footstools kicked hither and thither, trampled on, tormented and ill-used, but always returning to their former state and place as smooth and placid as if nothing bad happened. Without tenacity or the power of resistance, with as little loyalty to others as respect for themselves, soft and sweet, flattering and weak, they deceive the young and credulous who believe in the appearance of things as the reality. This softness, this sweetness is, they think, free grace to them alone ; they do not see that it is simply of the general nature of things, and as little individualised as trustworthy. When they find by experience that the hands of the putty velvet - gloved have no power to hold or to resist, but will caress friend or foe and be manipulated into beauty or deformity indifferently, then their young enthusiasm and innocent trust receive a shock from which they never quite recover, and they come to the knowledge that universal sugar is bad for digestion, and that firmness is a more valuable quality than amiability which has no backbone, and gentleness which abandons its trusts, betrays its cause, and forbears to strike a blow for the absent from excess of submission to the present power. With these we haye s however, true gentleness — the gentleness of strength ; softness of temper united with firmness of principle; the velvet glove over the living human hand neither cruel nor weak, but firm to hold and warm to press, soft to guide, and strong to retain. ; Gentle and fair, yet with power to! resist and ability to repel, this velvetgloved woman is one of the elements by which society is kept together, and at the same time kept pure. There is no weakness hpre, no flabby incapacity for gvasp or faithful holding, and no cruelty. The gentle mannered woman, with a will beneath her soft exterior, and principles as Btrong as her self-respect, knows as little of the treachery of weakness as she does of the concealed insolence of the 1 niora] assassin..-^' QueenV