I have just learned something new! Isn't it a wonderful thing that we
are "never too old to learn" and sometimes isn't it strange that no matter
how many years we have numbered we still learn best from that old,
old, teacher, Experience?
Vintage 1917 Singer Sewing Machine
Image courtesy/WorthPoint
For instance, there was a time 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 my doughnuts especially 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 alright," I answered easily, "or it would not have been in that 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!
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 the 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.
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 one 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 him before he saw him."
I have always 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 my advice until asked for
and then administer it in small doses.
There are ways of profiting by the experience of others, besides taking advice
carelessly given. We might watch, you know, while someone else tried the
vinegar on the doughnuts. And that brings me back where I started to tell
of a new thing I had learned. It is a great help with the work of sewing to
cover the tread of the sewing machine 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.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
(1867-1957)Prolific American writer Author of the "Little House" book series Image courtesy/Legends of America
"Giving And Taking Advice"
An article written for
The Missouri Ruralist
(1917)
From the book,
"Laura Ingalls Wilder
A Family Collection
Edited by Richard Marshall
With Illustrations by Susan Sternau
(1993)
Barnes & Noble Books
New York
