THE WOMAN OF TACT.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 24, 17 June 1893, Page 565

THE WOMAN OF TACT.

WHY OUR WIVES SO ABLY BULB US. BY LA BELLE AMERICAINE. A lady, who«e literary talent is unquestioned, wrote me ; • Why not make an article on the woman of tact ? The subject furnishes me with much food for reflection and is so many sided that I am positive an entertaining paper could be wiitten and presented, perhaps in new light.’ Undoubtedly my clever correspondent is right, for if we turn to history we shall learn that women of tact played no inconspicuous part in the doings of their day, unconsciously changing not their own destinies, but the fate of nations. If we were suddenly asked what woman of fable or of history was most noted for this delicate talent we should unhesitatingly affirm the immortal Becky Sharp ; and we can be equally confident that Mme. Crawley finds more admirers than the weak and vacillating Amelia. Courage is, perhaps, MAN’S GREATEST VIRTUE. The cobrageous man, whether he be a desperado or an Alp Arslan, is made a hero. The sour minded Carlyle, philosopher and thinker, by no means a man of action, always grew riotous in language when he glorified the performers of brave deeds, and we can well imagine the literary torturings Agnes Repplier would suffer if that extraordinary genius had undertaken the task of describing some historical woman whose wondrous tact had made her conspicuous in political affairs. Let us suppose Carlyle to have depicted Frances, Countess Waldegrave, a woman of Jewish origin whose several marriages did in nowise prevent from gathering about her the greatest people in the United Kingdom, and who swayed for so many years a despotic sceptre on Strawberry Hill It was in her palace that General Schenck wrote his famous treatise on poker, and also where strange recipes were learned for the concoction of new and utterly foreign dishes. It was her wondrous tact which ruled London society—not the ‘ swagger ’ element, hut the political and financial also. Have we her successor to day ? Mme. Carnot is described by French journals to be a woman of tact, and her praises are sounded even by opposition papers, but will Mm». Carnot go down to posterity as an extremely clever woman in whose saloon enmities are healed and friendships cemented ? For a time it appeared that Lady Randolph Churchill would lake her place in London as a remarkable woman of tact, and it was acknowledged that her noble husband owed much of his prestige to her abilities, but statesman flung ruthlessly away all his magnificent possibilities and became a carousing correspondent in Africian wilds, much, probably, to the chagrin of the fair American. Conspicuously wanting in tact is the wife of Henry Morton Stanley, and the explorer has a very weak support

in his helpmeet, whose ridiculous speeches probably lost him a seat. A TACTFUL WOMAN does not need necessarily to shine in the blare of the great world. There is ar much need for the employment of that art in the meanest household as in the spacious palace. No man is so utterly accursed as he that has a tactless wife. Indeed, George Osborne was much to be pitied, and his flirtation with Becky under those circumstances was pardonable. An ambitious man with a tactless wife is as a poor swimmer in angry waters laden with a weighty book on swimming or the ponderous family Bible. He is as much blessed as the well known father of a well known young lady who. with charming naivete, told at a famous hotel table the following story : ‘ Do you know,’ she said, • lawsuits are very expensive?’ • Yes.’ * Yes, and papa knows it, too. Do you know, some wicked men brought a damage suit against poor papa and he had to pay the jury £5O in cigars and champagne or else they would have decided against poor papa. I think those jurymen very wicked, don’t you ?’ This interesting information was given at the breakfast table of a popular hotel ; and the father, when he heard of it, felt, undoubtedly, hugely proud of his tactful daughter. I remember a family in India where the father, then a young man, had to leave the army solely through his wife’s want of tact. He was an ambitious engineer officer, and his wife had the cheerful faculty of saying or doing something which ruined his prospects. She would complacently disagree with the senior officer on some pet hobby, and repeat what her husband had sail about somebody in power before that somebody, and when the storm broke would wonder why she had so unhappy a time of it. AMERICA IS THE HOME OF THE WOMAN OF TACT. There is probably no household in the United States which does not possess a daughter with this talent developed to a remarkable degree. It can easily be accounted for. In an English home the wants of the master are first recognized. Are they in America? Is not the master in many homes regirded simply as the money maker, an inconvenient appurtenance who lias some sort of c'aim upon the family ? But is he not also an ugly bear whom it is not safe to too roughly cross? He lequires management, and very skilful management, and in the processes of that management the woman acquires lessons in tact which make her complete master of it. CAN THEN TACT BE TAUGHT? No, it is an inherent virtue never to be acquired by training or by rote. Was it not tact when Napoleon, accosted bv a gigantic and fat woman, who demanded bread on the ground that she was starving, replied : * M idame, look at me,’ pointing to his spare figure, ‘ Do not I require food even more than yon do ?’

Tact, frequently employed for the securing of noble purposes, is often debased for ignoble purposes. There is an unwritten tradition that tact is most useful to the woman aspiring to a social standing other to which she was entitled. This is to some measure true ; but the tactful woman need not be always empty headed, employing graceful artifice to thrust her and her surroundings into high places. The simple word ‘ tact’ embodies a whole world — it means that happier wotld where no careless, idle remarks inflict unseen wounds which hurt more deeply than sabre cut or bullet hole. THE WOMAN OF TACT AVOIDS TROUBLE in her family which a tactless woman courts. Men are not always nice in their homes. Their frowns and looks of gloom are often kept solely for domestic display. It is natural it should be so I'he man of business who looks depressed before his fellowmeu invites disaster—the relaxation comes when he is at home in the atmosphere where his natural self will assert itself. The tactful woman knows then not to worry her lord with those peculiar irritating minutiie of household disasters which are enough to draw from the most Job like of men exclamations of disgust. Does it not require a considerable degree of tact to seizr the situation when a bill should be presented ? Depend upon it, a happy marriage is only when the wife is a tactful person. It DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN THE COMPLETE ABNEGATION OF SELF as some would hastily he led to imagine—indeed, the possession of tact is the virtue which makes one preserve their independence, or rather supremacy, and rule others with golden chains The logical deduction is then that the happy marriage is where the worn in has the mastery—precisely so when that mastery is confined to the home circle-ergo the United States is the land of happy marriages—firstly, be cause her women a-e more tactful than the women of other nations ; secondly, because they are the masters of their lords.