If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. ~ William Morris

24 May, 2017

Womanly Wednesday ~ The Secrets of Charm


From Secrets of Charm by Josephine Huddleston ~ 1929

The dictionary tells us that charm is a number of things-- "a trinket to be worn around the neck to ward off dangers; the chirp of a bird," and as the interpretation of "Secrets of Charm," "it is the ability to fascinate, to please, to allure, to bewitch, to enchant."

To be charming one must cultivate the inner power that lies in every human being.  This power is awakened through the emotions and comes to its fullest development only when the individual can make people laugh or cry, curse or pray, love or hate, by merely touching upon the heartstrings.  When one has progressed this far, he must go still farther and make people laugh and cry at the same time; curse one and pray for one with the same breath; hate and love one with the same heartbeat.  When one can bestow happiness so poignant with pain that misery is pure joy, then and only then has the inner power or charm been cultivated to its fullest.

I'm not talking nonsense!  It is the development of the emotions and the ability within one's self to arouse and play upon the emotions of others that has made every great opera star, actor, writer, painter, musician and hero the world has ever known.

It is the cultivation of this inner power that lifts a few human beings out of the restless, bored, unhappy, seething horde of people called humanity.  It is this power that leads the shop girl who is mistress of needles and pins into the mansion where she is mistress of silks and satins.  It is the power that takes a chorus girl out of tights and puts her name in electric lights.  It is the power that makes the Only Man place a plain gold band or diamond circlet upon the finger that tells the world you are his to love, cherish and protect for as long as you both shall live.  And it is the power that makes most woman hate with a burning intensity the woman who has it, for women know its great influence.

The name of that power is CHARM.

(To be continued...)




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