RETURN OF WHISKERS

Grey River Argus, 6 September 1930, Page 9

RETURN OF WHISKERS

j ’J FASHION TN NEW YORK. I ' j BEARDS AGAIN ON YOUNG MEN. I MORE CONFIDENCE FOR YOUTH. The board is coming into favour with the young men of New York. Inereasing numbers of covered faces are appearing among poets and budding literary geniuses between the ages of 20 ami 30. And the cult is spreading to other circles, where there is a desire to escape from the trammels of youth. Just what the trammels of youth arc in the ])!es(>nt age, might seem a mystery. But there are trammels, nevertheless, to which youth strenuously objects. They concern the disappointing | fact that one has to wait 12 months' before becoming a year older.

Bring a youth is a boro, because the elders do not lake what one says wit ii the responsibility which goes with experience, says a correspondent, \outh is discoveding that, while it is allowed lo express any opinion it pleases, the opinions arc politely passed over ami make no impression. Hence the beards. The writer continues: —“To become the possessor of a fine facial adornment means, in the eyes of youth, to camouflage on<*’s inexperience while acquiring a certain dignity and distinction which gives larger authority to one’s words. So, from ear to chin, efforts arc being made lo accept Einstein’s theory that time is only relative ami apply it to conditions of intellectual life. “So youth is becoming graver and more ponderous. The bright, snappy judgments, born of the inspiration of the moment,- are giving way to more deliberate opinions. Wdiiskers are giving youth confidence to say it doesn’t know, when .some totally new question comes up in conversation. “To be able to say ‘1 don't know’ without feeling a sense of inferiority has been one of the chief problems of youth during the pro-whisker period.

It has constantly baffled youth to draw some elder person, of acknowledged ; reputation, into an argument, and then hear the elder admit quite nonchalantly that he ‘doesn’t know’ something. I Youth never quite knew whether the elder was laughing up his sleeve or really was willing to admit ignorance, j “But lately has come the conviction j that when a person really acquires | knowledge, he acquires the distinction of Teing able to say ‘I don’t know,’ as an indication that after long pondering lip has still an open mind. “Now an open mind for unwhiskered youth has been a horrible- indication that one’s judgment is inefficient, and does not work with the instant pre- ' cision that gains marks in the schools