Giving and Taking Advice

By Mrs. A. J. Wilder, Mansfield, Missouri

I have just learned something new! Isn't it a wonderful thing that we are "never too old to learn" and also sometimes isn't it strange that no matter how many years we have numbered we still learn best from that old, old teacher Experience? For instance, there was the time when I read, (not in a farm paper) that the addition of a little vinegar to the lard in which doughnuts were fried would keep them from soaking fat. I was preparing a company dinner not long afterward, and wishing to have my doughnuts especiall good, was about to pour the vinegar into the lard when the man of the Place came into the kitchen. From long association with the cook, he knew that she was doing something different and demanded to know why. When I had explained, he advised me not to try any experiments at that particular time. "Oh, it will be all right," I answered easily, "or it would not have been in thqat paper." I added the vinegar and learned it was perfectly true that the doughnuts would not soak the grease. They would hardly soak anything they were so tough.

Experience had taught me one more lesson!

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It is so easy to give advice. It is one thing with which the most of us are well supplied and are perfectly willing to part. Sometimes I think we are too quick to do this, too free in handing out unasked an inferior article. There is no way of estimating the mischief done by the well meant but ill-considered advice of friends and acquaintances. Knowing only one side of a question, seeing imperfectly a part of a situation, we say: "Well I wouldn't stand for that a minute," or "You'll be foolish if you do," or "I would" do this or that and go light heartedly on our way never thinking that by a careless word or two we may have altered the whole course of human lives, for some persons will take advice and use it.

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There were once two men who had different ways of treating their horses when they went around them in the barn. One always spoke to his horses as he passed so that they might know he was there and not kick. The other never spoke to them. He said it was their business to look before they kicked. This last man often spoke of his way as being much the best. One day he advised the other to change his way of doing because some day he would forget to speak and get kicked. Not long after, this actually happened and the man was seriously injured. His wife said to me, "If he had spoken to the horse when he went into the barn as he used to do he would not have been hurt, but lately he has stopped doing that and the horse kicked before it saw him." I always hav thought that the accident happened because of his friend's advice and I have seen so often where what was best for me might not be just the thing for the other fellow that I have decided to keep any advice until asked for and then administer it in small doses.

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There are ways of profiting by the experience of others, besides making advice carelessly given. We might watch, you know, while some one else tried the vinegar on the doughnuts. And that brings me back to where I started to tell of the new thing I had learned. It is a great help with the work of sewing to cover the tread of the sewing maching with a piece of soft, thick carpet. The carpet will act as a cushion and one's feet will not become so tired as they otherwise would when using the machine a great deal. There is another advantage in the use of the carpet in cold weather as it is much warmer for the feet to rest on than the cold iron of the machine.

Mrs. A. J. Wilder. "Giving and Taking Advice." Missouri Ruralist (January  20, 1917): 9.

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