The Finishing Touch

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22006, 12 January 1935, Page 6 (Supplement)

The Finishing Touch

With her white linen suit —this smart girl is wearing one of the new upturned straw hats and a fan-shaped bow of pleated ribbon.

visitors may pass on to other ports quite neglecting to tell them that they are as decent as might be expected, but not a patch 011 ours. Now there are three facts that make | these opinions, albeit interesting, of little worth. The first is that the stranger is a visitor, and common courtesy (if not diplomacy) demands that he refrain from anything savouring of censure. The second is that we are all on our best behaviour with a guest. He never sees us before breakfast, so to speak. The third is that one man's experience can never be a generalisation. The visitor's own personality, courtesy, tact and intelligence all have a bearing 011 the treatment he receives, particularly from the man in the street. Because one man is answered rudely when he asks his way does not mean that all the other visitors off the. same boat are being answered rudely, or that every other man in the street would have been irritable with him.

In every city there is every possible kind of person. There is the man who will walk a couple of blocks out of his way to put a stranger on the right track, and the one who will go straight ahead as if he had not heard him. There is the encyclopaedic individual who can tell without hesitation that a certain street is the seventh on the right, and the one who scratches his ear and says he " can't say just where that particular bank is, off-hand like. There are the people who ask a visitor to their homes and drive him about in their cars to show him the district, and tell him to be sure he looks them up again the next time he comes to this corner of the world; and there are hosts of the other kind of people. Moreover, there are patronising visitors, overbearing ones, stupid ones, highbrow ones, tactless, rude, bad-tempered ones as well as the thoroughly pleasant, sociable, intelligent, interesting ones whose visits we remember, and whose words of praise we cherish. It doesn't necessarily mean, however,. that New Zealanders are dense, or drab, or rude because a visitor says so; but neither does it mean that we are the only welldressed, hospitable people on the globe. If a visitor is treated badly, that is just his misfortune. If he is pleased with his reception, that is his good luck in striking some of the numerous pleasant people among us and probably a tribute to his own character too. But it is as well if wc receive plaudits and brickbats equally non-committally. To do otherwise would be to betray an adolescent lack of confidence and a desire to be sure we are creating a good 'impression.