TACT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 78, 2 April 1932, Page 4 (Supplement)

TACT.

ITS SECRET. SMOOTHES LIFE'S WHEELS. (By PRINCESS A. DE CIII.MAY.) Given love and the possession of ■ infinite tact on both sides, perfect happiness is inevitable in every married . couple. It is hardly possible to prove or disprove this statement, because the triple combination is rarely if ever found. But the truth of it is fairly obvious, lack of tact is responsible for practically all disagreements between two people who love each other. It is the spoken word, the look, the impatient gesture—not the object of the disagreement itself, which causes the gulf to broaden. It is ignorance of the precise moment to give way or to take a resolute stand. In other words, the absence of tact. For tact is merely realisation —knowledge, conscious or unconscious, of one's own and one's companion's limits and impulses. With it, there is no tiff which cannot be smoothed over. Without it, misunderstandings spring up like mushrooms.

I am speaking of the great questions, of course. There are, occasionally, solid deadlocks in married life that have to be faced without the aid of any oiling process. But the small troubles can be avoided by this exclusive quality, and it can, to a large extent, be cultivated. I know one couple intimately who are blessed with this priceless gift._ They have only quarrelled once in their lives, and then it was really a big matter, which their mutual common sense eventually settled.

In petty tiffs these two never indulge. If any small cloud appears 011 the horizon, it is never allowed to assume threatening proportions, because the mentalities of the couple are so attuned that both realise at once what has happened, and the sky is cleared with a smile or verbal explanation. If there should be any divergence of taste in small matters, such as choice of clothes or furniture, the last word is invariably allowed to the one whose everyday functions naturally give him or her the prior right of decision. For instance, if no compromise seems expedient, the man has his way in all business matters, and in household questions 011 which he can claim any authority at all. The woman wins on the majority of domestic questions, and her own clothes and most social matters. If the man wants to take a couple of stalls for the theatre and the woman wants to stay at home for a quiet evening, their mutual intuition tells them whose wish is the stronger, and the other capitulates without a murmur. You see, their tastes are by no means always in common. But the great god, elasticity, steps in, whose other name is tact. And let me repeat that he can tie cultivated.