It means that she shall treat you with the
same kindness on all occasions, and that she shall resent wrong done
you by another.
You like a girl who does not criticise unjustly, nor gossip about her
friends. Marcus Aurelius, in his meditations, says, "A man must learn
a great deal to enable him to pass a correct judgment on another man's
acts." And Arthur Helps, in his essay, "On the Art of Living with
Others," exclaims, "If you would be loved as a companion, avoid
unnecessary criticism upon those with whom you live." Gossip is a most
dangerous kind of criticism.
You prize a girl, too, who can like you even when she is not fond of
your surroundings. An honest friendship does away with all jealousy,
and makes each proud of the other's acquirements. "I must feel pride
in my friend's accomplishments as if they were mine, and a property
in his virtue." [Footnote: Emerson.]
Girls are not sufficiently inclined to help girls. Think of the shadows
which cross your path which some dear girl's hand could chase away.
You would not drive the bird from your window-sill when he daily comes
for crumbs, nor let a kitten stand mewing in the cold. Do not withhold
the charity of your friendship from the hungry, dreary girl who waits.
When the helping hands and generous hearts of such benefactors as every
city knows,--women whose names are familiar to us as synonyms of
charity, wisdom, rightness, but whose names we here repress because
publicity would detract from the modesty of their conduct,--when such
women stretch out hands of benefaction to their poor, ignorant, wicked
sisters in our great towns, sparing something from their purses, from
their minds, from their comforts, we wonder what must be the gift of
their friendship to their more immediate friends.
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