WHEN PEOPLE ASK ADVICE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1733, 3 July 1917, Page 4

WHEN PEOPLE ASK ADVICE.

Lots oi' folk feel frightfully llattcreel to have their opinions solicited —more especially when the advice is taken and proves to be all right. Personally, 1 shgply hate when my advice is asked. It’s such a dilfienlt position to be placed in. If you say right out what,you think, you may make someone your enemy for life. If you try to please, you may give advice that isn’t worth the giving, and when it is taken and is a failure, you feel dreadfully silly, especially if you get blamed for giving it. Either way you look at it, there seems to be rough country ahead. Of course, the advice given should be more or Jess candid. There’s no use giving it if it isn’t. But there’s such a think as serving up unsavoury dishes disguised with plenty of sugar. Most folks have an elementary knowledge of tact if they care to use it. To be tactful means that you study others more than you do yourself. “Thank you, my dear,” said a great friend of mine to me one-day. “1 know now what to do. You have helped me so much.” 1 was so pleased until I found out that she did exactly the opposite from what I had advised! I’ve just discovered that she always does that when any one gives her advice! There’s lots of folk like that. They wash to have some one else’s opinion, and they ask advice on all sorts of little things, with their minds made up all the time about what they’re going to do. Then there are the really knotty problems thatanake me shiver when I feel them coming. What, for instance, can you tell a girl who wants to marry against her parents’ wishes, or a girl who is contemplating taking up a career although her people have told her not to On one hand, your sympathies may be en-, lirely with the girl. On the other, you can’t advise her to disobey her parents. The best way out of it is either to refuse to give the advice asked for, or to go and see the parents, and try to soften their hearts. Unfortunately, in the latter case, they may be dreadfully cross to think that their daughter has talked her affairs over outside the family, so it needs tons of “understandingness” to do this. I know, to my cost, that it’s not always easy to find the tactful reply that is necessary. But whatever you do, douT be blunt, for bluntuess always hurts, especially when what you say is true. What is the good of uncompromisingly telling “the truth and nothing but the truth” if it means you’re making a life-long enemy? There’s very few folk indeed in this world who can afford to air their views candidly. They’ve got to check them up a bit.—Exchange.