AS OTHERS SEE US

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 22 May 1928, Page 8

AS OTHERS SEE US

"Who is the real man in any of us? Wo all of us wear masks. We have a private ideal of ourselves which we know we can never realise. We have also a more modest ideal of the figure we should like to cut before the world. Both of these are quite different from the figure which we. actually present, and of which for the most part we are unconscious," says Mr John Buchan in the "Sunday Chronicle." "A man engaged in public life is like an actor lOnstantly in the limelight. [Te has to prepare Ill's face for the public. There are some qualities, delightful in privacy, which are no good on the public stage. These he must conceal, for they will he misunderstood. A public man may have a keen sense of humour, but he must curb it. He may have an acute and subtle mind, hut he'must beware of it. He must teach himself to gloat over truisms and swell with platitudes. That is the expected thing, for it is the language of public life. If he is too clever and too logical ho will lie called academic. . . In private life we have also our make-ups. It is inevitable, since the business of life requires tiie acceptance of certain conventions. A man with a reputation as a snob may at heart he a decent kind-hearted fellow with a belated passion for romance. Another with an arrogant manner may be only shy. A third., whom everyone lab'els a cynic, may be as arrant a sentimentalist as Thackeray. In such cases the surface manner is a kind ot self-protection. But in public lite the difference between appearance and reality is accentuated because of the fierce glare and the need for a more elaborate make-up. ''hat is why we can never be certain that any biography trf an eminent person gives us the truth.