| OCR Text |
Show r 3. JMei? ... I Etiquette Expert Finds Looking at View J Without People in It an Empty Picture Author of best selling "Amy Vandcrbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette," who is also a mother of three boys, reveals her personal creed. This is one of a series of statements prepared for broadcost by thinking, useful people in all walks of life. The program is presented pre-sented by Edward R. Murrow over KSL'B at 6 p. m. Monday through Frld.iv. By Amy Vanderbilt Author, "Amy Vanderbllt's Complete Book oi Etiquette" As long as I can remember 1 have been b red with landscapes. I couldn't look at a picture, a photograph, or a view with much interest unless somewhere there were ioople or something that indicated they were there or soon would be. I I was long secretly ashamed of this limitation in me, I should have, I felt, been able to drink in the beauty of Mt. Hood without with-out stealing a connective glance at the outskirts of Portland. I should have been able to love the ocean even when no ship rode low on the horizon to excite ex-cite my speculations. But now, after half a lifetime of getting to know myself, I realize that there are too many of us who see the view and not the people humanizing it. My need for people in the picture has given me a fuller under-stading under-stading of life. I believe I have something warm and good to give my children chil-dren in my love of people. When my eldest son was a little boy we were on a Fifth Avenue bus. He kept turning around to smile at someone I couldn't see. When we got off this person did too, and I saw that she was an elderly el-derly Negro. "Your little boy likes me," she said, with some surprise. "He didn't seem to notice no-tice any difference in me at all, Like I was his own grandmother. grand-mother. How's that?" "Because," I . replied, "he's never been taught by the grownups around him that there is a difference." Children, uncoached in prejudice preju-dice and class consciousness, en-1ov en-1ov neoDle for what thev are. As I they mature, our society soon sets them right as to their place in it. More often than not they 'accept this place without question ques-tion and thereby shut them-I them-I selves off from warm, human I contact with many of their fel llows. They become cocoonlike in 'their fear that reaching out beyond be-yond their own immediate social confines will place them in an untenable position. It did take a certain courage, maturity and sophistication to broaden our circles to include people of other races, nationalities, nationali-ties, and religions on the same terms as we do those bom into our little place in the world. But in doing so, I lost my fear of those different from myself in some way God chose to make them. As friendship becomes possible, pos-sible, differences seem very unimportant. un-important. I think I have learned to accept the differences as an interesting part of my new-friend's new-friend's personalities, not something some-thing to be feared, tactfully ignored, ig-nored, or excused. I shall never forget my first lonely schoolgirl days abroad before I learned to speak French. I was entirely surrounded surround-ed by the majestic beauty of the Alps but I could not speak a word to the people nor they to me. But within a few months, through the miracle of language, people came into the picture for me. It was the beginning of my understanding that the greatest natural beauty is, for me at least comprehensible only through living liv-ing contact with people of all uinrU who share the view. |
