MANAGING PEOPLE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18949, 21 February 1925, Page 6 (Supplement)

MANAGING PEOPLE.

It's a tremendous saving to remember that people arc all different and not, to try to change them to your own pattern. It was a clever old Frenchwoman who said, " Pour supporter la vie, il fallait prendre lc temps coinme il vient, el les gens coramo ils sont." Xow your real friends are those whom yon have chosen deliberately; you have chosen them as they are, because their personality, or some part of if, charmed and appealed to you. Don't try, immediately you have secured these friends, to change them and their characters, and their habits and views, and even their customs, into your own pattern. * You chose them as they were; don't be angry and disappointed that they can't bo something else. Do you know the story of the wo'nan who set her heart on a robe of purple brocade with gold threads in it? She searched all over for this entrancing fabric, and sometimes she found a brocade, but it had no gold threads; and sometimes she found a 'material run through with gold i breads, but, it wasn't brocade. Once she found a silk brocade with gold threads, but it. was not purple. At last she alighted on the teal thing, and bore it homo in triumph; but, alas! the purple faded and the-gold threads tarnished; it did not wear well at all, and she became sick at the very sight of it. Eventually she discarded it altogether and replaced it with a gown of plain brown Holland, which wore excellently, and to which she ultimately became completely devoted ! This woman was lucky to be able to change. It simplifies matters to make up your mind before you go out to buy it whether you really want brocade or Holland. And so it is with friendship. The treatment of relations is even a more difficult problem. Everyone knows the old saying;—" You may be able to manage your friends alone, but you will require assistance to resist your relations." Personally, I have always looked on my relations as very rich plum-cake. I like it, but in small pieces and at long intervals; above all, when I choose to have it, and not when it, is thrust upon inc. But even one's relations are human, and have their good points. Try to find out what these are, and fix your mind on them. When Gladys' name is mentioned, ,or h> s,!^ce > remember how sympathetic and unselfish she was when your bov was ill, and forget that her diamonds are finer Hum yours and that she never Jets vou HH-get it,-—Eleanor Eisner, in Eve.