SINCERITY?

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 55, 8 March 1929, Page 13

SINCERITY?

People who are. themselves sincere and simple in their outlook on life are sometimes deceived by people who are just tho reverse, remarks a writer in tho London "Daily Chronicle." They can be taken in by audacity or skilful self-adveitisemont, or oven by downright hypocrisy. Their own goodwill and good nature, their wish to be pleased, their child-like enjoyment of anything "as large as life," or, for preference, a little larger, all combine together to make them easy victims of tho selfish who love self-display, or who concentrate on greedy getting.

Those of us who, possessing more per : .ception and, alas, perhaps, less good nature, see the truth of the situation, find it hard to bear. There is our friend, the person we trust and admire, making herself foolish over this person who brags so adroitly, poses, with such hard out-lines, as a dashing speaker of the truth and braver of results, or airs an imaginary delicacy of temperament and sensitiveness to beauty and the finer things of life. There are so manyforms of pretence and deception, some of them more or less unconscious, but all, equally annoying when seen as such. Wo ourselves, perhaps, could, have played this very game, could have adopted the high-handed or the sympathetically sweet manner which has cast such a spell. But wo preferred' to show the respect we felt, to subordinate ourselves a little, to bo genuine rather than impressive or "charming." We would not have offered the friend we loved any imitation qualities; we paid her the greatest tribute of all, sincerity. But sincerity seems such a small, unemphatic thing in comparison with these much more noticeable performances. "We feel for the time being quite ruled out.