THE SNAKE IN THE GRASS!

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19215, 2 January 1926, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE SNAKE IN THE GRASS!

How often have we approached its bland surface, full of hope, in a new hat, or a different hair-dressing, to be met with the poisonous reflection: "Do I really look like that? It must be u shadow, or a mark on tho glass! I really can't believo I've got all those—well, I may as well face it—crowsfeet ; *md I used not io have those lines on my forehead, and my face does look a funny colour. I wonder if I'm bilious, or can it be that bott ie-green isn't really my colour? The girl in the shop said —" But the girl in the shop can lie, you reflect grimly; the mirror can't. Unless, of course, you breathe heavily on its surface. polish it on you sleeve, and try again, with the same result, only this tifrie you discover several new freckles and a white hair —or cm it be a very fair one ? Whan you finally manage to pull it out, 'together with several guiltless companions, iyou find it quite defintely is white, like a "piece of cotton, and that tho afternoon is not as bright as it was. How true, you think bitterly, is the warning "never io trust a friend, and only a mirror in a cross light," Of course, some of your friends are mercifully short-sighted, anil perhaps a hand-mirror is n little trying. Now tho glass in that nice, dark corner of the hall— It is at this moment that we are further encouraged by the sight of the short, stout woroan with tho skirt that drops rather badly, and one stocking twisted, who advances to meet us. After all, if our face is not all we hoped, at any rate, our figuro—"lt can't really be me reflected in that shop-window. Why,'l'm inches taller than that, and that creature must be at least forty-five round the hips; and I know that skirt of mine always was badly cut, but still it—"There must bo something wrong with tho glass, like those distorting mirrors in Madame Tussaud's." You turn awav, crushed, hopeless, "Snakes in the grass!" That's just what they are. What do they ever uo but show you that you had a smut 011 your nose all tho time you :so fondly hoped you were making a good impression on that nice Geoffrey Rundle. or that your petticoat is showing, or that you have a ladder in your stocking, just as you aro being announced at some big "at home ! _ \ou would never have known how shiny your nose was if, durinp- that last blissful foxtrot, you hadn't seen yourself in the glass at the end of the toom. t . Oh, Hand-glasses, pier-glasses, old classes who make you look as if you'd just had a long illness, there never was a hotter name for you than "snake in the grass."

"The cruel looking-glass that will never tsliow a lass as comely or as kindly or .as younu as once she was."