Milton, sitting with his daughters, yet not
comprehended, is to me one of the saddest pictures of a great mental
endowment and an unsatisfied heart. Would not Elizabeth have given
years of her life and reign for the possession of one true friend?
It is an extremely rare thing to hear of a woman hermit, or recluse.
Girls give themselves up to nunneries, and believe they shut out the
world; but they are either seeking the friendship of a cause supremely,
or are hugging the closer an earthly, though a disappointed, love.
It is not weak, as Grace Aguilar suggests, for women to love women,
girls to love girls. "It is the fashion to deride female friendship,
to look with scorn on those who profess it. There is always, to me,
a doubt of the warmth, the strength, and purity of her feelings, when
a girl merges into womanhood, looking down on female friendship as
romance and folly."
It makes no difference who you are, girls, you need friends among all
classes and ages of persons. Sometimes it is the little child who can
give friendship best; sometimes it is the woman bowed with years; often
it is she whose years, surpassing yours by ten or twelve, have brought
her into the midst of that experience on which you are just entering.
Surely you must always need the sweet exchange of feeling which takes
place between girls and girls.
We remark the countless friends we have in Nature; but beautiful,
ennobling and comforting as the trees, the streams, and long green
meadows are, you cannot afford to give up flesh and blood friends for
them.
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