She will, without doubt, wear her laurels becomingly, and her success will be easily acquired. Her spirits, and her health will promptly respond to the elixir of her interesting labors. Life will be full of new and surprising interests and it will be well worth the effort expended. Sleep will be more refreshing, she will not be troubled with nerves, and her appetite will be a source of profound thankfulness to her. She will radiate a quality of good-fellowship that will be infectious, and her whole philosophy of existence will be charity itself. Surely it is worth while.
Choosing Your Friends.—The young wife should choose her friends with caution. Remember you are beginning a new life in which even trivial matters may exercise an influence that will be bad. One should appreciate the difference between true friendship and indulging in friendly relationship with promiscuous acquaintances. A physician has a better opportunity of observing the conduct of the feminine element of a community than any other person. We have come to divide young wives into two types: those who attend strictly to their own affairs, and those who mostly attend to their neighbors' affairs. It is not too much to say that a young wife's time will be wholly occupied if she has begun her housekeeping career with the intention of becoming a home-maker. She cannot, therefore, afford to waste her time with promiscuous acquaintances. Women who become promiscuous in their friendships have time to waste for a number of reasons,—
1st. Their husband and home is not their whole existence. If success and happiness depend upon how the first year of wedded life is employed, then husband and home should be the young wife's whole existence.
2nd. Women with time to waste have no ideals. Women without ideals are not home-makers. A home-maker cannot acquire any information from a woman who wastes her time in idleness.
3rd. Idleness creates mischief. One who is idle is a mischief maker. An idle brain is looking for amusement, and as the impulses of an idle brain are evil, these women are gossips, and scandal-mongers, and home-breakers.
4th. True friendship demands nothing. Promiscuous friendship on the other hand does demand something, and as these women live in the evil atmosphere, they live mentally on scandal and gossip. This is their mental plane and they give and take nothing higher than that which they understand.
The young wife will, therefore, be wary of this form of friendship. Infinite harm is being done in every community in the country in this way. No home, no person is too sacred for the vituperative tongues of these scandal-mongers. They are densely ignorant though they may be fluent talkers. They ingratiate themselves into the confidence of a willing victim, learn the victim's secrets, and rend her to pieces on the next street corner. Many a man has begun wedded life with the laudable intention of helping to mold his young wife's mentality, of preserving her innocence and purity of thought, only to be undone by the evil machinations of these human derelicts. He will be amazed and astonished at the opinions she gives utterance to, and if he does not find out where she is getting them, and check the desecration going on, she will be beyond his reach in the very near future. No self-respecting woman will tolerate such acquaintances. There are, however, many innocent, pure women, who are innately too gentle to assert themselves by insulting another woman at this stage of their experience, who have the makings of a good wife and mother, who wittingly become victims by reason of their very gentleness, and consequently lose their ideals, and drift into failures.
True friendship is necessary. Many men and women rightly attribute their whole success and happiness to having had the right kind of a friend or friends. Charles Kingsley when asked by Mrs. Browning to tell her the secret of his life, said, "I had a friend," A friendship that is not an inspiration, an incentive to higher thoughts and nobler deeds, is not true. "True friendship demands nothing." It gives. We should cultivate the friendship of those who know more than we do, so that we may learn and profit by the relationship. Some people radiate sympathy and helpfulness and inspiration. Instinctively we can tell those people when we come into their presence. We leave them, not once, but always, with the feeling that there is something about them that energizes and inspires. They draw out our better selves. We are conscious of our shortcomings and faults, and in their company we strive to give utterance to worthy thoughts. We feel capable of great deeds. If we could surround ourselves with these friends, we feel that life would mean more, and that we could accomplish much. "He that walketh with wise men shall be wise." This is where true friendship is valuable. These moments of inspiration help us to pull ourselves together. We climb a little higher; we see further and clearer; we learn the meaning of life's duty; they change the whole complexion of living. The little things, the annoyances, the disappointments, the failures, the pains, the sorrows, the passions, we see in their true perspective and they no longer usurp importance, because we are beginning to learn the significance of the things beyond. The incidents of life are no longer life itself.
One friend, one true friend to the young wife, will indeed be a tower of strength to her. Every young wife needs a friend. The desire for sympathy dwells in every human heart. Even the assiduous person needs encouragement and a little praise. It is wonderful how a mite of laudation will prod us to be more worthy. Even our joys never intoxicate save in the telling. By sharing our happiness and joys with another we double them. True friendship means confidence, affection, harmony, love. To be in harmony with one person means that we invite the harmony of all mankind.
If man is made in the image of God every human being must be more or less divine. Confidence, affection, harmony, love,—the attributes of true friendship,—are the divine sparks in our humanity. True friendship, therefore, is growth in the divine sense. There are real things in life which we seldom acknowledge but which are, nevertheless, real. We do not often admit the existence of the divine in ourselves, but it is there. If we did acknowledge it oftener we would live nearer the truth, nearer God.