On what principle Nature bestows her favours it is difficult to hazard, more difficult than to discover what principle guides the British Government in distributing her coveted decorations to the British public. Nature is romantic. Exercising her sovereignty she gives her honours as she pleases. No money can buy them. Blue-blooded pedigrees have no preferential tariff. Nature mocks our conventionality, spurns our orders of merit, and winks at our social somebodies. Often she openly prefers a costermonger to a King--stamps aristocratic grace on a gipsy, and refuses it to a Duchess. There are insignificant great men who would be hustled in a crowd if they wore no badge, while to social nobodies Nature attaches a halo of distinction which the crowd delights to honour as subjects offer incense to a King. Personality is an attribute that carries a man far on the road to success. Personality is an endowment which proclaims a man one of Nature’s aristocrats. It is Nature’s advertisement of her best, and she is proud of her handiwork. Personality is a fascinating asset; it lends dignity to common clay; it gives a man a standing outside the crowd, which he occupies with ineffable content and full advantage to himself. Some people have "an air" about them, and the atmosphere they move in is intoxicating to those dwelling under the spell of their presence. You cannot crush people who have personality. Over and over again it turns the scales in their favour in the competitions of life. Their virtues may not be of the celestial, their talent may lack glitter, but their personality grips you with its pomp and splendour, and they sit amongst the mighty, imposing themselves on gods and men. The envious man admits their success, and slurringly says: "They are commonplace: there is nothing astonishing in them except their success." He consoles himself with the banal reflection that, other things being equal, he is quite as good as they. But the strange mystery of presence steps in and prevents other things ever being equal.