Separations caused by misunderstandings are hard to bridge, because it is so impossible to trace them to their beginnings. We have forgotten ourselves what it was that first aroused the feeling of distrust, and because we cannot give a reason for the feeling it is probably the stronger. “I feel because I feel” is, after all, a position of great strength. But we have lost each other as in a maze whose complications are too numerous to permit of return or even exit, and here there is no man in the middle to point out the way backwards or forwards.
Interference from without, tale-bearing, and meddling generally are such obvious modes of dividing friends that I need hardly allude to them except to say that outsiders rather overlook the fact that the “third body” is nearly as much in the way between friends as between lovers. Both resent having their quarrels made up from without; the would-be healing hand is in most cases changed into that thumb about which we so often hear, and which makes a small breach a large one.
I will only now speak of one more way in which friends part utterly, and that is the parting of determined purpose for some clearly-defined reason. This is not to be done lightly, and will only—can only—be done by girls of decided character.
The reasons for such partings must lie deep, and in light, unthinking characters there is no depth to contain them. Earnest differences will often spring up on religious questions, and if their convictions or fanaticism lead them to believe such differences vital, girls will sometimes mutually agree, either tacitly or in words, to bring their friendship to a close and be in future mere acquaintances.
When two friends disagree in matters of religion, the subject is generally altogether dropped between them; and can there be a true friendship, do you think, when what is of vital interest and importance to both is entirely left out of conversation?
Minor religious differences are of no consequence; but let there be agreement in what an old woman aptly called “the fundamentals,” and this Christians of different sects can certainly manage to do.
Again, if one of the two friends pursues a line of conduct of which the other strongly disapproves, either on religious or moral grounds (not upon some strained question of ceremonial or class etiquette, remember), a total estrangement is likely to take place. I have a case of this sort in my mind at the present moment, the cause of disagreement being certain books, the reading of which one considered would injure her moral purity. A hot dispute ensued, and the girls parted. It was best they should part; they could never have been lasting friends.
Let me add but one word to this chapter of broken friendships.
Girls must remember that even a dead friendship is a sacred thing, and that its death does not loose them from the responsibility laid on them by that friendship while still alive. The secrets your friend confided in you while your friend are secrets still. You have no right to make them common property because she is no longer your friend. All she told you must be as if it were under the seal of confession. There is nothing I think more contemptible than a girl who makes use of the knowledge she acquired of another while they were friends to show her up to ridicule or scorn. It somehow reminds me of a decoy-duck. It is some satisfaction, however, to feel that such a creature gets more than all the contempt and disgust she intended for her sometime friend.
I am afraid girls lose sight of these responsibilities of friendship, and think when the last handclasp is loosened they are freed from the burden of the other’s confidence. But this is emphatically not the case. A dead friendship is a sacred thing.