CALLING A SPADE A SPADE

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 5, 1 November 1924, Page 41

CALLING A SPADE A SPADE

VOX! know the kind of woman who prides herself upon calling a spade a spade, and who always speaks the unadulterated truth at any cost to herself or her friends. She takes credit for being frank, whereas she ought to hide her head and go away somewhere and have a correspondence course in tact, lessons in when to keep a still tongue, and where to turn the blind eye. Tact is the greatest lubricant for the machinery of life. The candid friend just puts grit in the wheels. She is a wet blanket on your most enthusiastic schemes, and she applies the prick that deflates your most beautiful bubble. The metaphors are purposely mixed, for she is indeed all these things. You show her round the newly-decorated house that you and your husband have spent weeks of hard work in accomplishing. “Awfully nice distemper, my dear,” she remarks in a voice that prepares you for candour to come, “but will grey walls match your furniture?” And ever after you have a secret anxiety as to whether grey walls really do match. The woman who always is in agreement with you is a colourless nonentity, but between her and the woman who always tells you what she considers the exact truth is a world of difference. Happy is she who knows when to temper truth with tact.