GIFTS AND GIFTBUYERS.

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 72, 18 December 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

GIFTS AND GIFTBUYERS.

A Study in Human Nature. The whole world nowadays is giving useful presents. In spite of much excellent advice to tire contrary, most folk still pack all their Christmas shopping into the hectic period immediately before Christmas. The bugbear of many a wife’s otherwise tranquil existence is the annual pilgrimage in quest of Christmas prel sents for in-laws she has never seen. , As one young woman complained, “John , informs me that I must get something ' for Aunt Emma, but he won’t even give me a hint as to what would be appropriate. He has known Aunt Emma I from childhood, yet when I ask him . what she is like, he says vaguely, “Oh, ' sort of queer. You’d better spend five dollars on her.” About gifts for men, don’t give a man anything too expensive. If you give a man a present which is more costly than he could afford to give you, somehow or other he feels that you have put something over on him. In consequence he is embarrassed and a little resentful. A married man is apt to object to an expensive gift from his wife on quite different grounds. “Please, dear, don’t spend much on me this year,” begged a husband whose wife had lured him into the shop to look at a high-priced smoking set. “Well, what do you want?” demanded his wife unhappily. “Handkerchiefs and bedroom slippers,” returned her husband blithely. They always come in handy and I can afford to pay for ’em!” “Anybody who finds himself growing pessimistic about the human race should get a job clerking in a gift shop for a few weeks,” declared the proprietor of a novelty store. “He couldn't help seeing a fine, unselfish side of life that would be a revelation to him. A girl will spend thirty shillings of her small earnings on a necklace for her pal. Last year I heard of a homesick young clerk in a bank who gave up his precious vacation in order to buy his sweetheart at home a wristwatch. But perhaps mothers are the most generous givers of all. Not long ago an elderly woman came into our shop and tried to sell her wedding ring. She said she wanted to give her young daughter a pretty birthday dress.” There are others who make queer choices. A bachelor cousin gave an aunt of sixty-five a gold vanity ease. A bookkeeper who had never been more than five miles from the city in ten years had set his heart on a wardrobe trunk. In the average small town or city, the gift shop merchant is acquainted with all the local romances. Indeed he has the inside story on more than one budding love affair. For example, Miss Maria Jones may take most seriously the attentions of the stout widower who has been escorting her to church and prayer meeting ing for a year; but the gift shop manager knows that last Christmas four beautiful beaded bags, at exactly the same price as her own, went to* four different post-office addresses. Worse still, each bag was accompanied by precisely the same poetic sentiments as those which so thrilled her. Time was when the only gifts that a man could make safely to a woman were flowers, books and candy. Nowadays he can give a girl in whom he is interested almost anything that he would give his sister, it is part of the new frankness that exists between men and women.