Some one—I think it is the author of "John Halifax, Gentleman"—has called friendship a "Foreshadowing of love"; and if it is natural for a woman to have a lover, it is no less natural for a girl to have a great friend among her girl associates.
How do girls make friends? and why do their friendships last very often but a short time? or, again, how is it they ever endure a long time? are questions which people who have forgotten their own early friendships, or, perhaps, never gave much thought to them, puzzle over in vain. And they may have puzzled you too, my thoughtful girl-readers, who want the ideal friend you have read of or dreamed of in day-dreams, but neither possess nor know how to acquire.
To begin with—What is friendship? and I am inclined to define it as a bond of mutual affection, sympathy, and help. If it is lacking in any one of these particulars, just so far does it fall short of ideal friendship.
Test your present so-called friendship by these tests, and I think you will find that any dissatisfaction you may feel in them can be accounted for by a failure to pass one or other.
There is, perhaps, not much difficulty about the first of these. Young people feel quickly and strongly, and if girls did not honestly love one another, or imagine—also honestly—that they did, the friendship, if, indeed, it could exist at all, would be shorn of half its charm. But love must be fed, and will only starve on a diet of respect and admiration, without a very large admixture of sympathy. Sympathy, fellow-feeling, mutual sensibility—call it how we will—is a simple necessity to our ideal friendship, and by no means compels the two friends to unvarying likeness either in character or tastes. But our ideal friends—let us call them Alice and Maud—must be united so wholly by this subtle bond that the pleasure, pain, or interest of the one touches, through her, the other, who shares in what I may call this reflective way the emotion originating with her friend.
Alice, who does not personally care for music in the least, yet thoroughly enjoys a concert, because she is feeling (reflectively) all the time the keen delight with which Maud is listening to every note; and Maud, for the same reason, has true pleasure in reading that rather dry volume of essays, because that scattered throughout are sentiments and expressions which she knows very well Alice will greatly appreciate.
Mutual sympathy between friends is, of course, the outcome of love; and yet it is surprising how little sympathy sometimes exists between girls who to all appearance are really fond of one another.
This may arise from selfishness, unselfishness, or unintelligence—that density of mental vision which has never been educated to perceive the subtle bonds which bind soul to soul.
Now let us take Edith and Amy as examples of an imperfect friendship, in contrary distinction to the ideal or perfect. They are fond of one another, but there is a lack of mutual sympathy. Amy is full of ideas and projects, which she sows broadcast during their long confidentials, and which spring up in great beauty (to her mind, at least) in the fertile soil of Edith's admiration. But all the giving is on one side. Edith listens and wonders, applauds or condoles, as her stronger-minded friend may give her the cue, too unselfish, and perhaps, also, too timid, to intrude her own less thrilling interests and hopes upon Amy's self-absorption; so that when the latter comes to an end of her confidences, and has leisure and recollection enough to say, "And now, Edith, what have you been doing?" she hastily replies, "Oh, nothing particular," glad to be able to shield her insignificance in silence.
Amy does not miss the return confidence which makes friendship so sweet; she is too full of her own affairs to be a listener. Edith is her overflow, whom she leaves saying mentally, "What a dear little sympathetic thing she is! What should I do without her?"