FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN GIRLS.
You think, perhaps, that I can find no fault with the friendship of
girls with each other, that that certainly is safe and pleasant. I
have said enough for you to understand that I believe in reserve even
in girl friendships. Girls are apt at certain periods of their lives
to be rather gushing creatures. They form most sentimental attachments
for each other. They go about with their arms around each other, they
loll against each other, and sit with clasped hands by the hour. They
fondle and kiss until beholders are fairly nauseated, and in a few
weeks, perhaps, they do not speak as they pass each other, and their
caresses are lavished on others. Such friendships are not only silly,
they are even dangerous. They are a weakening of moral fiber, a waste
of mawkish sentimentality. They may be even worse. Such friendship may
degenerate even into a species of self-abuse that is most deplorable.
When girls are so sentimentally fond of each other that they are like
silly lovers when together, and weep over each other's absence in
uncontrollable agony, the conditions are serious enough for the
consultation of a physician. It is an abnormal state of affairs, and
if probed thoroughly might be found to be a sort of perversion, a sex
mania, needing immediate and perhaps severe measures.
I wish the friendships of girls were less sentimental, were more
manly. Two young men who are friends do not lop on each other, and
kiss and gush. They trust each other, they talk freely together, they
would stand by each other in any trouble or emergency, but their
expressions of endearment are not more than the cordial handgrasp and
the unsentimental appellation, "Dear old chap."
I admire these friendships in young men. They seem to mean so much,
and yet to exact so little. They believe in each other's love, but do
not demand to be told of it every minute.
It is the highest type of friendship that can believe in the friend
under all circumstances. I have a friend from whom I may not hear once
a year, yet I know just where she stands in her relation to me, and I
would have no fear of finding her cold or unresponsive should I at any
time call on her for a friendly service. I may never see her, or even
hear from her again in life, and we may live long years yet on the
earth, but I would as soon think of doubting the return of to-morrow's
sun as to doubt her love. There is no need of words, of caresses, even
of deeds. We are both busy women. Our daily cares absorb us, yet we
know that we are friends, and in the great hereafter we hope to find a
place where we may pause and look into each other's faces and enjoy an
interchange of thought. But now other interests than self-seeking
claim us. We work on, cheered by the thought that time cannot alienate
us, for true love is eternal.
The charm of a true friendship is that it does not make demands. I had
a school friend who thought that because she was my friend I must tell
her all my affairs. She was offended if I received a letter that I did
not read to her, or if I went out to spend the evening without first
informing her. Her friendship became a tax because it demanded so
much. And, after all, was it true friendship? Was it not love of self,
rather than of me? People sometimes imagine that, because they crave
love, they are affectionate and unselfish. Is it true? It is rather
natural to want to be loved, but it is selfish, and the feeling
indulged in to any extent is weakening. To want to be loved means
usually to want some one to be a protector, a giver of pleasure, a
supplier of wants. To desire to love is nobler, for to love is to
give. God so loved the world that he gave. Christ loved us and
gave--gave Himself for us. To love truly, grandly, nobly, is to grow
strong through giving. Not giving that which we should not give, not
unwisely giving of time that belongs to our own best good, not giving
of strength that should be dedicated to some better purpose, not a
yielding of principle, nor purity, nor honor, but the true giving of
that which enriches both giver and recipient, which ennobles, uplifts,
encourages and strengthens, and leaves no sorrow in its wake. The
truest giving is sometimes a refusal to yield to demands that are
unworthy. Love wisely, my daughter, and you will give wisely.