LOST CONVENTIONS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 303, 23 December 1933, Page 3

LOST CONVENTIONS

We dou’t pretend in these days, j especially as we grow older. lor the , very young it is still de rigueur to pro- I less great enthusiasm for dancing, ten-! nis, and every form of sport, but many . a girl, once her teens are passed, shows the cloven hoof of a commercial mind and is off to make money in a hatshop, tea-room, or as a chartered accountant, writes th e Hon. Mrs. Edward btrachey in a London daily. Work is now considered very smart. A job of any sort is a tremendous leather in one’s cap. It is quite chic lor a peer to learn the routine oi a bank and for an ex-debutante to scivc apprenticeship in a beauty parlour. 1 here is no lalse pride about receiving tips and commissions—these are lapped up as a cat laps milk. Many well-known stores have a waiting list of th e nobly born anxious to be employed from nine till six. Youth in this year of grace is extremely hard boiled, and makes no pretence that love in a cottage is any good what ever. One pretence we have really dropped, and that is about beauty unadorned. Seventeen and seventy apply their make up quite openly, and to eschew an these aids is to label oneself eccentric. Perhaps this is really an even more subtle form of pretence -—the assumption that we all are, and must look, th e same age. We shall never get rid of every soil of humbug, because it is convenient to say we cannot afford this, that or the other, though most people manage to afford anything they really want. The truth, and nothing but thy truth, would have a very depressing effect on the world in general. We must cast off th old ideas and conventions which bore

us ami cling to any form of romance and imagination that, may bring colour and gaiety to life.