To be popular is something that nearly everyone desires. There are a few simple tips which you can use to help you along the road to popularity. When you shake hands, grasp the hand as though you were glad to see the owner of it, not as though performing a perfunctory duty. Put your heart into your handshake. While you are holding the hand, look into the person's eyes and give him a smile from your heart. Let cordiality and geniality gleam in your very face.

There have been great advocates at the bar whose charming manner, like the presence in court of some of the world's famous beauties, would so sway the jury and the judge as to endanger and sometimes actually divert justice.

A gracious, genial presence, a charming personality, a refined, fascinating manner are welcome where mere beauty is denied and where mere wealth is turned away. They will make a better impression than the best education or the highest attainments. An attractive personality, even without great ability, often advances one when great talent and special training will not.

There is always a premium upon a charming presence. Every business man likes to be surrounded by people of pleasing personality and winning manners. They are regarded as splendid assets.

There is no substitute for personal charm, for a refined, magnetic manner, and in spite of the fact that most people believe one must be born with it or forever lack it, the quality can be acquired by anyone who will take as much trouble and pains to acquire it as would be necessary to accomplish anything else worth while.

Everyone would like to have a gracious manner, to be popular, to be loved by everybody. It is a legitimate ambition to be well thought of and admired by our fellow men. Yet the majority of us are not willing to make any great sacrifice to acquire this art of arts; in fact, we are all the time doing things which repel others and which inevitably tend to make us unpopular.

The secret of popularity is to make everybody you meet feel that you are especially interested in him. If you really feel kindly toward others, if you sincerely wish to please, you will have no difficulty in doing so. But if you are cold, indifferent, retiring, silent, selfish; if you are all wrapped up in yourself and think only of w hat may advance your own interests or increase your own comfort, you never can become popular.

We expect observances of the more important things even by selfish people, but it is the outward expression of kindly thought and feeling, the practice of little acts of courtesy, of thoughtful attentions, which sweeten and refine life and indicate a lovable nature.

A great many people who deplore their unpopularity and cannot explain why they are not understood, why they are shunned, make the great mistake of taking it for granted that they never can be popular.

If you wish others to be interested in you, you must be interested in them. Listening itself is a fine art. There is nothing more flattering to a person than to feel that you are intensely interested in what he is saying. To be a good listener is next to being a good talker. But if you seem indifferent, if your eyes wander around the room and you seem bored when others are talking, they will lose interest in you.

It is not absolutely necessary to be a great talker in order to be popular, but it is necessary to be a good listener. I know a lady who is immensely popular, although she talks very little. It is a study to watch the changing expression upon her face caused by the play of thought as she listens.

If you will just make up your mind that there is something interesting in everyone you meet, and that you are going to find it, you will be surprised to see what facility of speech you will acquire. Popularity will then come easily to you.