THE STRONG SILENT MAN RETURNS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3148, 18 December 1922, Page 2

THE STRONG SILENT MAN RETURNS.

(By Kathleen O'Brien). I was walking along the Embankment from Charing Cross to Westminster, when I noticed, on one of the seats, a figure that seemed vaguely familiar. I turned to look at him again, whereupon ho raised his shabby hat, so-that I saw, and recognised, the. whole of the square, bony face, and the dark hair greying at the temples. "I know you now." 1 said ,as 1 sat down beside him. "You are the Strong, Silent Man." "1 am," lie replied in a hollow voice. "You seem —1 am afraid you are in trouble." I said, rather diffidentlv, remembering his terrific and inordinate pride; "can I help you?" ''You are very good," he. answered. "I am afraid there is nothing you can do. I have been out of employment so long, 1 begin to despair of finding new work. Authors —dramatists —they practically shut tho door in my face. It's all the ' high-strung, temperamental hero now ; running about parading his emotions and gettin gniisunderstood. Tell me frankly —you are a woman, and I used to appeal to women —why have I become so unpopular? Women admired strength once. Has increasing emancipation deflected their sympathies towards emotional vacillation?" "1 will tell you," I said, "at the risk of offending you. You say women admired strength once. We admire it now. Woman is still a good deal of a primitive creature; I sometimes think the more emancipated she grows, the more primitive she remains. It isn't your strength we're tired of. It's your awful, abvsmal silence.

"Wliv can't you be just a little companionable and chatty? When you como home at the end' of the day. having completely ruined) a powerful combination of uiiKcruploUK magnates through sheer, indomitable personality, why can't yon >,it d'own cosily by the tiro and: tell' UH in a pleasant, gossipy way all about it? Instead, you come down to'dinner with a grim smile and clenched l lists, and not in word do we get out of you from the oytstens to the iJeneditcine. "We tell you, brightly, all about the cook giving notice, and how Bobby fell into the duckpond. You make no* reply whatever. Probably, you haven't even heard. Think of the strain on our conversational faculties.

"Alter dinner we perhaps play a little Chopin. We know we're looking nice in clingy, drapy things, the sort of tilings you play Chopin in; and we really don't plily at all badly. But when we stop you don't even say. 'Thank yon, dear, that's a nice little thing; what is l it?" You. just go on reading the Financial 1 World! with l n> grim smile; or you say, 'Ah!' during a minrm rest, and strike the gramophone cabinet with your clenched list. It's—it's maddening ! "Now, the vacillating hero may vacillate, but he does talk. It's true, he probably talks about himself. But he's quite happy. And it's so much less fatiguing." Do you see?" "I think I do," said the Strong. Silent Man. One day J hope to meet him again; still proud, still strong—but considerably less silent.