WHAT THE MASCULINE SEX MOST ADMIRE IN WOMEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VII, Issue 4, 24 January 1891, Page 9

WHAT THE MASCULINE SEX MOST ADMIRE IN WOMEN.

There is a certain something which, for want of a better name, is called womanliness, and it is that which makes women more attractive to men. A great many virtues go to make up this one great jioesession, and they are what men like in women. Men like, in the first place, amiability in a woman. They like a pleasant appearance. They like the doing of little things that are pleasant to them. They like the courtesy of the fireside. They like women whose lives and faces are always full of the sunshine of a contented mind and a cheerful disposition. They like an ability to talk well and a knowledge of the virtue qf silence. They like a motherliness big enough to understand the wants of the older, as well as the younger, boys. They like a disposition to speak goisl, rather than evil, of every human being. They like sympathy—which means a willing ear for the tale of sorrow or gladness. They like a knowing how to grow old gracefully. They like knowledge of how to dress well, which, by the by, doesn’t mean conspicuously. Men are most attracted by good material, plain draperies, and quiet colours; not by showy colours or designs. They like intelligence, but they prefer that the heart should be stronger than the brain. They like a companion—a woman who has sufficient knowledge of the world and its ways to talk well with them, who is interested in their lives and their plans and in their hopes, who knows how to give a cheering word or to listen quietly, and by a tender look express the grief which the heart is feeling. They may sometimes say that children are a bore and a nuisance, but a man shrinks from a woman who openly declares her dislike of them. A man expects the maternal instinct in a woman, and is disappointed if he does not find it. They like women to be affectionate there

never was man yet, no matter how stern, no matter how cold, no matter how repressive, so far as his own feelings were concerned, who did not like a loving squeeze of the hand or a tender kiss from the woman nearest to him.