But
society we must have. Why not, then, do your part to make it nobler,
friendlier, truer? Much depends on the effort every girl makes to
improve the social condition of the community.
Though you are so often indiscreet, fickle, ungenerous in your
friendships, girls, I believe in them. When I see a party of you come
together, so glad to be with one another again, giving and taking,
after the most lavish fashion, I want to say, "Yes, indeed!" to Mr.
Alger's remarks about school-girls; though I would leave off the word
school, and make his expressions apply to girls everywhere. "Probably
no chapter of sentiment in modern fashionable life is so intense and
rich as that which comes to the experience of budding maidens at school.
In their mental caresses, spiritual nuptials, their thoughts kiss each,
other, and more than all the blessedness the world will ever give them
is foreshadowed."
To sustain this friendship, I repeat, there are very necessary demands
upon your patience, your charity, and your constancy. "The only way
to have a friend is to be one," issues from the oracular lips of the
Concord seer. "Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them, or
bear with them," is an appeal which has been handed down the ages from
the wisdom of that great "seeker after God," Marcus Aurelius.
Next to constancy in our fondness for others should come forbearance
and conformity.
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