经典英语美文：The Essence of Charm_美文

经典英语美文：The Essence of Charm

A woman's charm spreads round her that particular glow of well-being9 for which any man will want to seek her out and, by making full use of her nature, celebrates the fact of his maleness and so gives him an extra shot of life. Her charm lies also in that air of timeless maternalism10, that calm and pacifying11 presence, which can dispel12 a man's moments of frustration13and anger and restore his failures of will.

Charm in a man, I suppose, is his ability to capture the complicity of a woman by a single-minded acknowledgment of her uniqueness. Here again it is a question of being totally absorbed, of really forgetting that anyone else exists, for nothing more fatally betrays than the suggestion of a wandering eye. Silent devotion is fine, but seldom sufficient; it is what a man says that counts, the bold declarations, the flights of fancy, the uncovering of secret virtues14. A man is charmed through his eyes, a woman by what she hears, so no man need to be too anxious about his age: As wizened15 Voltaire once said: "Give me a few minutes to talk away my face and I can seduce16 the Queen of France."

But charm isn't exclusively sexual; it comes in a variety of cooler flavors. Most children have it--till they are told they have it--and so do old people with nothing to lose; animals, too, of course. With children and smaller animals, it is often in the shape of the head and in the chaste17unaccusing stare; with young girls and ponies18, a certain stumbling awkwardness, a leggy inability to control their bodies. But all these are passive and appeal by capturing one's protective instincts.