DON’T APOLOGISE

Evening Star, Issue 19520, 30 March 1927, Page 10

DON’T APOLOGISE

FOR THINGS YOU CAN'T KELP

Don’t apologise for all .swrts of things that can’t be helped. It only draws people’s attention to those very things that you do not wish noticed.' For instance, if you live in furnished rooms or a flat, and someone conics to tea—don’t keep saying: “I know this is terrible, but I wouldn’t have it like this.” Or, ‘‘ You will excuse the awful bedroom, suite, won’t you, but the furniture isn’t ours, you know. It’s fatal, and so, boring. Give your visitor some credit for intelligence. Announce at the beginning, if she doesn’t know, that you have taken the place furnished, and that will flush the matter. She will know then without any further explanation that the bad taste or omissions in crockery and so on are not yours. Most people have a family skeleton of some sort, says a writer in ‘ Home Notes,’ and it is always tho skeleton" one meets when particularly wishing to avoid it. But apologising for relations is not only a rather shabby thing to do, but quite , the worst form of ill-breeding. I know a girl who took a young man to see her family. She was thirty, and sho knew that, however nice he was, tho family might go rather against the grain with him. Sho was aching when they loft tho to apologise for this, that, and tho other, but she didn’t. If she had, tho young man would have thought, “H’m, she might ho apologising to someone for mo, some day.”

As it was, he admired her courage, for ho was a nice young man, ami could see in a moment how the land lay. And ho was fonder of her than ever, which is the reward of virtue! The most common form of apologising, of course, is to an unexpected caller, because the rooms are untidy. This gives tho impression that the apologlser is used to living among muddles, except when a caller is expected. It is far better to try.to keen jour house nice always and enry clay, so that it doesn’t matter who <~alls or when. As for the usual .-upeiTicia! untidiness, that cannot he helped where humans live—well, if the visitor is informal enough to drop in unexpectedly, she is informal enough to ho treated as a friend.

Some people are always apologising. One has tho feeling that they will absolutely efface themselves, an I go out some df-v, ns Alice in AA'ondcrland "was afraid of doing, like n candle. They apologise for their old clothes, for recalcitrant maids, for rude children, for their goods, chattels, and all that is theirs. They apologise for you. if you say something n trifle outspoken or act. ns they consider, unconventionally. There is* another form, of apology—l might call it the egotist’s , apology—which spoils many friendships. Perhaps you bare bad a friend who often embarrassed you by apologising for being “boring,” or “not nearly so cWer as*”you are "--anything,,like that which forces you to contradict her humble assent-ion. It’s hateful to have to do it, whether your contradiction is Kincere or merely polite. The egotist who apologises in this fashion may also he sincere, but those who are merely fishing for compliments to feed their secret conceit deserve to he squashed. A famous admiral once declared that his motto was; “Never explain. Never apologise.” That sounds rather sweeping. But possibly he had been bored, probably because of his high rank—by having interminable, explanations and long-winded apologies thrust upon him. Explain just as much as is necessary, and if necessary, and leave the rest. Apologise only 'when yon have done someone some harm, not for things that are' nobody’s business but your own.