Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1860-04-19
wOMAN,s FRIENDSHIP.

Womans capacity for forming genuine and
lasting friendship with members of her own sex,
and a friendship merely, involving nothing ten
derer, with members of the other sex. is jus,
now receiving some attention at the hands Of
literary people. Miss MULocH's book-"A
Woman's Thoughts about Woman" has contrib.
uted its amount to excite this interest in the
subject. There is vein of infdelty, running
through this book, as to woman's capability for
q purely disinterested attachment. The assump.
ton is, that feminality cannot love feminality,
but is ever leaning in its sympathies to the male
nature; as in this extract, for instance: "In
most friends (both female) whose attachment is
specially deep and lasting, we can usually trace
difference, of strong or weak, gay or grave,
brilliant or solid. answering in some measure to
the difference of sex-the wonderful law of sex,
which EXISTS spiritually as ,veN as materially, and
often independent of matter, altogether; since
we see many man who is much more of a wo-
man, and many q woman who would certainly
be the better half of any man who cared for
her." Without this difference, Miss MULocH
says: "a close, all-engrossing friendship be-
tween two women would seldom last long; or if
it did, by their mutual feminine weaknesses ac-
ting and reacting upon one another, would most
likely narrow the sympathies and deteriorate the
character of both"
We find it true with both sexes, that marriage
is higher than any other natural relation; and
before friendship, therefore, is love. In this
relation, congeniality is the bond of union, with
the difference of male and female pervading the
whole nature, to keep the two enlarged and
growing in the process of assimilation to each
other. For it is certain that association always
makes US more like husband, wife and friend, if
the inner affection subtends the outward rela-
tiouship and equally obvious that such associ-
alton does not have 4 warping and contracting
influence on either man or woman. So, the fact
that "strong, grave and solid" women generally
make friends of "wsak gay and brilliant wo
men, and uice versa, and the other fact that wo-
mans friendship for man is inclined to run into
the tender passion, do not prove her incapacity
for friendship, but her greater capacity for love
and marriage.
Friendship is an attachment springing from
citation of the amiable and noble qualities of the
mind and heart. To assert womans incapacty
for the former kind of friendship, is to accuse
her of species of ingratitude; but none are
reader than she to be thankful for kindnesses
We have seen paragraph in many papers lately,
recommending young men to be coarse and even
savage in their manners to the ladies on the cars,
because the ladies appear to be ungrateful but,
while this is sometimes too true, it is often very
often, we doubt not, g false view of the nature
and circumstances of the case. The modesty
and delicacy of the sex must be preserved in
public places; and any demand for lavish and
over ostentatious display of her 'politeness' on
such occasions, must proceed rather from vain
wish to be thanked by her than from genuine
gallantry and respect for woman.
In the other kind of friendship, that which is
founded on appreciation, has not woman as clear
an eye to perceive nobility, and as warm heart
to admire it, as man? She is admitted on all
hands to be possessed Of instincts and intuitions
which are in the estimation of character more
unerrng guides than reason itself. She is pre-
eminently the incarnation of human affection,
tenderness and sympathy. For these reasons
she surpasses man in the intensity of her appre-
citation of whatever is humane and noble in SEN
timent or intercourse. For our part we know of
nothing more beautiful or touching in the hiSto.
ry of friendship, than the attachment of Ruth
for Naomi; and the same pure, high and lasting
friendship wells up in the heart of many a
woman.
Lord Bacon says: THE principal fruit of
friendship is the ease and discharge of the full
ness of the heart, which passions Of all kinds