The Cadiz Democratic sentinel. [volume] (Cadiz, Ohio) 1854-1864, 1860-05-16
Huron County April, 1860
The Possibility and PccWtiarity OF
s'H@ i Female Friendship.

The Possibility aud Pccutiarity of
s'H@ Hi Female Friendship.
Dinah Maria Muloch writes thus OF the
o. friendship Of Women:
~ /. "From our peculiarities Of temperament wo-
mems friendship are rarely or never so firm,
!. 30 Just, or 80 enduring, as those Of men-when
you can find them. Demon and Pythias Ores
tes and Pylades, Brutus and Cassius-last and
loveliest David and Jonathan, are pictures un.
matched by any from our sex down, even to the
far famed ladies OF lllangolle. When such
bond really does exist from its exception to
general masculine idyosncraes-- especially the
enormous absorption in and devotion to num-
ber One--from its total absence of sentimental
ityT its undemonstratveness, depth, and power,
9 friendship between two men is higher thing
! than between any two women--nay one OF the
highest and noblest acts in the whole world
!; Precisely as were comparisons not as foolish as
they are odious, truly good man, from the
larger capacities Of male nature both for virtue
q and vice, Is in one sense, more good than any
good woman.
Yet, though dissenting from much ofthe ro-
nance talked about female friendships, beliving
the two thirds of them spring from mere idle
c ness, or from that 6esoiD dan.ier which for want
Of natural domestic ties, makes this one tenn.
% porary substitute. Heaven forbid that should
30 malign my sex as to say they are incapable
of an emotion which, in its right form and place,
constitutes the strength, help, and sweetness Of
many, many lives and the more SO because it is
one of the sweetnesses we know
,,ea Probably there are few women who have not
seen some first friendship, as delicious and al
most as passionate as first love. 1t may not last
1T seldom does; but at the time it is one Of
the purest, most self forgetful, and selfdenying
attachments that the human heart can expert
ence; with many, the nearest approximation to
that feeling called love-1 mean love in its
highest form, apart from all selfshness and
2 sersous and ensousness--which in all their al.
o ter life they will ever know. This girlish
friendship, however fieeting in its character,
and romantic; even silly, in its manifestation,
let us take heed how We make light Of lest we
be mocking at things more sacred than we are
aware.
And yet, it is not the real thing--not friend
ship bat rather kind Of iorehad owing Of love,
y as jealous, as exacting, as unreasoning-as
d wildly happy and supremely miserable; ridicu
Iously SO to locker on, but to the parties con-
cerned, as vivid and sincere as any after pas
sion into which the girl may fall; for the time
being perhaps long after coloring all her world.
sYetis is but dream, to melt away like dream
when love appears; or if it then wishes to keep
up it's vitality at all, it must change its charac-
ter, temper its ezaetions, resign It's rights.
III & 'tLove is sweet
"A ~ > = Given or returned;'' - ~.
70 and 10 10 friendship; when, be it ever so inf
Intestinal in quantity, its quality is unadulter-
assd,springing, Irepeat, ,Aas womans friendship
almost always does spring, out Of that one
5tidea,d .imps:!s;#ensss, often wrongheaded, but
merely evil-hearted. which makes us at once so
7chsrming and 90 troublesome. and which, fear,
! .never will be got out Of US till we cease to be
women, and become what men sometimes call
aus--snd they well know they give us but too
much need to be--angels."
.E4t H - : =. d -. ~