"VANITY, THV NAME IS -"

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12765, 17 June 1911, Page 12 (Supplement)

"VANITY, THY NAME IS -"

THF. CURIOUS CONCEIT OP MEN AND THE MODESTY OF WOMEN.

If there is one sin from which the average- man considers himself free, it lc the sin ot vanity. Vanity, he firmly believes, is the prerogative of women. Women are vain, dear creatures, he will tell his wife or sweetheart while he fondly pinches her cheek. The wife or sweetheart is generally too wise to correct him, but there nevet was a woman yet who did not wonder at the marvellous vanity of men. As a matter of fact, there is scarcely any difference between men and children in this respect. A child with a pew pair of shoes will not rest content vi.'til everybody in the bouse has gone into raptures " over both shoes and wearer, separately and together. And a man's method of attracting notice to his splendour are—to -women—hardly less simple. FOR THOSE SHE LOVES. Women, on the contrary, are singularly free from vanity. You laugh and point to my lady's mirrors, and her habit of looking in them at overy possible moment? My dear, young man, you do not understand. A woman will take infinite pains to dre.'s herself to please somo body she loves—although he seldom notices it—or to annoy somebooy she nates. If she pleases the loved one she* ia in the seventh heaven, as she certainly is if she annoys the^ other woman.' But she never admires herself in the wav that a young man admires liis invisible moustache. Men, too, are free fi?om a terrifying danger which hangs over a woman from tjio. age of fourteen to the age of ninety or so—the criticism of other women. How terrifying this may be men can seldom understand. A man may wpar a battered straw hat for ever and ever, and go about jn Shabby trousers on Sundays, and Ms friends will not think it worth while to notice: whereas a woman dare not have a biitton out of plac« without all the iadies in the district noticing it. Hence the agony of mind that! a woman suffers if she .thinks her back hair is coming down is not at all <iuo to vanity. And hence the mirrors, which, thoughtful shopkeepers provide soabundantly. ' THE LADY-KILIJNG YOUTH. Even "when you come to pretty girls, who might very well be excused for having their heads turned, there is no aunroach to the vanity of the ladykilling youth. A pretty girl takes her rrettiness as a gift from the fairies, to | bo tended as the gardener tends b beautiful plant. It is her duty, a nee*?- ! sitv to her self-rescect, to look nice. j Contrast her with the average hand- j Pome man. Here you have vanity sivj monumental that a woman can only I Gasp. To his lady friends the handsome boy invariably adopts a sorry-my-dear-you- love- me^ but- I-can't- ikelp -it-you- j know tone ot voice, which at first j makes a sensible girl want to slap him, then amuses her, and makes her yawn. But he never changes. He is the same year after year; and though ho considers himself such a superior being, ho is always as anxious to attract the attention of washerwomen as that of duchesses. . So, mothers, pray that your babies •will lose their bsauty when they become men. A woman will carry her beauty as it should be carried, neither scorning it nor worshipping it. The handsome man loses his head early in life, and never finds it again.