The majority of women who have passed middle life will
utter, out of their own experience, the truth that such confidence,
such intercourse and familiarity, cause regret; and that such
friendships are seriously detrimental to human happiness, wearing the
mind, grieving the spirit; they cannot continue for many years. Our
elders go even beyond that, and say that woman cannot love woman as
woman can love man. Why is it that the friendships of boys usually last
longer than those of girls? I cannot believe it is because girls are
less constant or less friendly: I know they _are_ not. Can it be because
boys are less sensitive, and more sufficient for themselves? or is it
because they are less intense, less confidential, and move along more
slowly and suspiciously? Does it ever come from peculiarity of
temperament in the case of both boys and girls, there being girl-boys
and boy-girls? I am inclined to think that, because a boy is a boy, and
a girl is a girl, the characteristics of both are required to make a
perfect friendship. Of course there are broad exceptions to this
opinion.
Can you have more than one intimate friend among the girls? That
depends, too, on the nature and degree of closeness in the friendship.
It requires a large amount of generosity on the part of several when
two persons are close friends of a third. That blissful "_solitude
a deux_" becomes misery _a trois_.
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