YOUNG MEN MORE SENSIBLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12646, 2 June 1919, Page 7

YOUNG MEN MORE SENSIBLE.

A woman said this truly gratifying thing to me tho other day: “Men are more_ sensible than they used to he.”' “You are being complimentaryP” I suggested modestly. “ Not at all,” she answered, “I nm stating a fact which is plain to every observant woman old enough to make comparisons. The Ipreseut-day young man of from eighteen to twenty-three or so has a lot more sense then the youth of that age had ton years ago.*' “ Are you sure it isn’t that you have grown more tolerant?” “ Quite sure. Haven’t you also noticed it?” I hesitated. “ Perhaps—yes, I think so. One does not often come across the hobble-de-hoy or the callow youth now. I agree. The war has ‘washed him out.’ ” “ And given him the sense and bearing of a man of thirty,” she said. ‘ “Cast your mind back aud recall very many pre-war young men,” she went on, “ Most of them were very young, weren’t they? “ They wore nice enough hoys, but, oh, how elementary! Had they done anything? Nothing much out‘of the ordinary. Had they been anywhere? Very few of thorn. What did they talk about? Chiefly such commonplace things as cricket and football, the stage, dancing and the betting side of horse-racing.” “But,” I protested, “they were amusing—some of them?” “ For a little while—or as antidotes to deadly dull folk and bores,” she admitted. “But all tho time, you know, one could help feeling how empty they were. That is why quite young girls so oftefi showed preferences for middle-aged men. They grew weary of everlasting futilities, A woman grows up quicker than a man, remember.” “I never do.” I said, with attempted gallantry. “But if that is so, isn’t the girl of to-day, with all her warwork , behind her, still ahead of the man of her generation?” She shook her head. “ I don’t think so. His experiences havo been so ex-traordinary-far more so than hers. She may have been iu the war as a nurse, hut she has not been in the trenches and over the top of them; she may have been behind the lines as a ‘waao.’ hut she had not been over them in a flying-machine. “Most youni masculine shoulders carry old heads to-day. Tho combination is a, good one, You have the boyish spirit tempered with the knowledge of maturer years. That makes for moro sense. And more sense, in its turn, makes a man moro attractive to a woman. “ It used to ho difficult to suffer the empty-headed, ‘silly ass’ type gladly.” —R. G. in the “ Daily Mail.”