FRIENDS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2273, 23 September 1897, Page 43

FRIENDS.

Words are easy like the wind, Faithful friends are bard to find.

There are so many points to oonßidel about a friend if we desire that he or she should be all tbat a friend can be; and friendship of the right sort is such a factor for good in our lives that I am inclined to think we scarcely pay sufficient attention to the matter. Nothing is more frequent thaa to hear people lamenting the various causes which have combined to separate them from the friends of their youth. They speak as it no other friendships could be v?oxtfc

making, no other friends take the place of those from whom the waves of chance separate them.

It is certainly true that no friendship of later life can have just the same qualities as those youthful friendships, with their wealth of gaiety, their fund of hope, their sublime confidence. * But there are stronger, deeper, fuller chords to be struck on " the harp of life " by the friends of riper years.

" Show me a man's friends and I will tell yon the kind of man he is," says an old proverb, and there is a considerable amount sf truth in its brief. Men are free to choose their friends where they will ; therefore the choice reveals the man's inner nature. A man's life is so much more free from the ibonds Imposed by conventionality than a Roman's ; his limits are so elastic, bis emancipation from the narrow circle of his own special social plane is in most cases so complete, that he may choose his friends from any station of society. Secure of finding opportunities for ripening friendship, be is free to consult his instinct*, and to surrender himself to the attractive companionship of those whose tastes, hobbies, temperament, and sympathise promise to harmonise with bis own.

Smith's greatest friend is a m&n whose social position is so much beneath his own ttiat Smith's aristocratic family " grows hot all over " when the man with the old coat and the soft wideawake is seen prowling round with the head of the house on a Sunday morning.

"Just when all the people are going to church too ! Ido think it's too bad of papa ; he might think of us a little."

Jones, the eminent barrister, wanders off for long delightful rambles with strange seedy-looking men, who are laden with specimen boxes, cameras, and such like Bohemian parsphernalia. Mrs Jones does cot know these people, though the sound of their voices and the smell of their tobacco reach her as they sit in Jones's study on a Saturday night, or gloat over the treasures of thair Sunday morning ramble. It is her " trial " that Jones, who is so clever, so brilliant, thould choose friends who can never advance him in bis career, who have no influence, who are, in fact, from society's standpoint, "people whom it is quite impossible lo know, don't you know, dear ! " Mrs Jones «peEds the major portion of her time in calling and receiving. She has a nicely graduated manner, with just the right amount of warmth and empressement, from the Government House set downwards; and in her most wearied moments, when she is compelled to have recourse to a dose of ether or a cup of " laced tea," she finds consolation in her own sense of virtue.

41 What you girls would do or what would beoome of the family if I did not -make some effort to maintain our position in society, I really don't know. Your father, would be perfectly happy if we were forgotten to-morrow 1 "

And yet perhaps in all Mrs Jones's long visiting list sue cannot reckon as many loyal and devoted fiiends as her husband possesses in that little group of kindred spirits and modest natures which she contemptuoutly labels as his " cronies."

Bat we women have nofe the same freedom in ordering our lives. There are limits imposed on us which render it very bard to bold the familiar intercourse of friendship with those whose position, duties, or tastes detach them from the immediate circle in which we move. How then and whence &r« we to choose our friends? Mast we choose them above us, so that we may not be " king of our company " 1 or beneath as, so that we may be purged of all suspicion of worldly advantage ? Should they be older or youcg«r than ourselves, of the same or the opposite sex 1

First, then, it is not always we who do the choosing. There are sure to be others — at leaat we may surely hope so — who will feel drawn to us, and will make an effort to ripen acquaintance into friendship. When Much is the case it only depends on bow we receive these overtures to indicate our own feelings in the matter. One thing lam oonviaced of : there is often much disquiet and a strong temptation to discontent in the companionship of friends whose social position is higher and whose wealth is greater than our own, though their mental culture and moral excellencies may stand on the same plane. The danger is net so much to ourselves, for we surely have too much common sense to be rendered discontented or unsettled by a mtre chance of fortune ; aad, moreover, we ouraelve3 relish to the full the Bweetness and the true compliment implied in the friendship of those who must, in the very nature of things, be seeking us for ourselves alone.

It is to the younger members of the family that a danger exists in the companionship of those who are of more social importance and greater wealth. Children and young people are apt to grow restive under home economies of pocket money, dress, and amutements when they are continually confronted by the larger latitude in all these re*p» ct6 which is natural to their wealthier friends.

Shall we then choose our friends — bear in mind always that we are speaking of friende, not acquaintances — beneath us in wealth and social position 1 Thia choice may haTe its drawbacks also, since it is not good for either man or woman to be "king of the oompany" in a worldly sense any more than in an intellectual sense. A sensible equality of worldly standing, of means, and of intellectual and artistic culture is on the whole the sphere from which wom«n may cull their happiest friendships — from a social point of view.

' The real question — the vital point in Choosing our friends — is, however, not their social standing or monetary advantages — lor we are not cataloguing the uses of .friends — but their moral qualifications, their gifts, their tenderness, loyalty, and sympathy. In a word, we must be able not only to love them, but to admire them ; not only to enjoy them, but to trußt them ; not r only fe3l the warmth of their affection, but jfeel assured of the strength of their loyalty. And if we demand so much from our friends, I suppose we are quite ready to promise as much on our own Bide 2 Not only ready to promise, but competent to carry out I Yet sometimes I think, as I hear this or that friend discussing mutual friends, that we jpaußt have one code o£ what we ezoeot to

receive and another of what we are prepared to give !

We have no right to expect inviolate honour and secrecy for our own confidences unless we observe the same — no right to expect perfect loyalty from others when a passing vexation, a trifling misunderstanding, sets us discussing the whole grievance with a third party. Each individual friend demands an individual loyalty. What A tells us in confidence is for our ear alone. It ia not intended to be paesed on to B, even though B may be personally as dear to us as A. Perfect loyalty and entire trust must necessarily exißt between all real friends. Moreover, should a day come when. some unforeseen circumstance gives the deathblow to our sometime friendship, honour demands — more strenuously even than in the days of our warmest affection — that all confidence, all insight into character, all knowledge of past faults and failings which our intimacy has revealed to us shall be buried in inviolable silence.

Whether the fullest and most perfect friendships are formed with those older or younger than ourselves is a question which must always depend upon the temperament of the person concerned. Some natures possess a reserve of perennial' youth which places them in sympathy and understanding with those many yeara their juniors ; while on the other hand some natures, from an apparent want of elasticity, delight in the more philosophical outlook of thoie considerably older than themselves. The great point in any friendship of riper years seems to me that it should be within our grasp at the right time, and the right time is the time at which each heart and mind are at a stage of experience and development which enable them to need, sympathise with, and appreciate each other.

We can all call to mind friends whom we now know crossed our path too soon — before we could appreciate their rarity and worth, before the plough of sorrow bad cat deep the farrows of oar nature and laid bare the fresh earth ready for the harrowing of experience, the seed of humility. We have all wept over friends who came into our lives too late. Death or parting snatched away the treasure we only discovered too late.

Th#re are courtesieß ne owe our friendc, and let us never forget them: delicate re-

serves which we must always concede to even " he that etickcth closer than a brother " — let us never try to push through them ; abstinences and self-denials which we owe our friends — and if we love them truly we shall never neglect them.

One question still remains : Should we choose our friends from our own or the opposite sex 1 Now this question is a very wide one, inasmuch as it trenches closely upon a subject which I have long intended that we should discues — platouio^, to wit. We will therefore leave the sex of our f rieuds as a point for consideration under the head of " Platonics," though I c*nnot resist one brief reference to the subject for my closing sentence. No wiee woman will ever permit £he charm of masculine friendship? to blind her to the value and the necessity of always preserving intact/ the friendship of a certain number of true/ and noble members of her own sex. A woman who has no woman friends is a woman self-condemned.