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.