The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1870-02-23
F RI E N D S e I P.
lFrom the Saturday Review.]


fFrom the Saturday Review
OF all classes of human relations
ftiendship is the least cultivated in
England. Domestic ties are sacred
With US, professional duties are faith
fully performed subject to due per-
centage of grumbling, a few among us
have an idea that they are citizens as
we'll as men, and that citizenship in
eludes certain public responsibilities;
but friendship after very early youth
10 nowhere in the field, and is dis
tanced by every other affection that
can be named. We have hallowed it
BY no religious sentiment, and thrown
round it no sacredness of obligation
when once undertaken; even our clos
est friendships are things of chance
more than of choice, and come and go
with the tide of events like the drift
weed of the ocean; for it is by no means
certain that the man we call our friend
this year will be anything nearer than
q mere acquaintance next year. We
know nothing of the old classic roman
ticism which created Orestes and Pyl-
AIDES; and that odd differentiation in use
among certain of the Sclavonians t0
this day, when the sworn " brother :"
Of q man is trusted with his business,
his honor, his very wife as second
self, is just as foreign to us-a phase of
feeling to which we have no parallel,
no false likeness even, in our more pro-
sale code Of manners. On the contra
~, mine own familiar friend of modern
life is oftenest he who leads us into
rotten speculations in which he secures
his gain by our loss, who rms off with
our daughter and makes love to our
wife, and uses against us the knowl-
edge which our very trust has given
him. In fact, life is too full of COM
petition for the mutual unselfshness
and ready sacrifice of friendship; and
We have substituted in its stead that
general habit of good-fellowsllip which
we mean when We call man clubba-
BILE par erceilance, and by this term ex-
press our highest idea of his personal
qualities And beside the weakening
of the tie DO competition on the one
hand, and by the communism of club
life good-fellowslip on the other. the
complicated state of society at the
present day makes it very difficult to
keep up anything like that intense
unity of feeling and action which
younger and simpler societies find nat
ural and easy. There are SD many
things to he thought of and provided
Tor in the days work; and among these
comes the wife, whose likes and dis
likes must needs more or less deter
mine her husbands relations with his
friends, And we know that very few
wives adopt their husbands old friend.
with cordiaiity while some do not
even tolerate them at all, and scarcely
one suffers them to be as free of the
house as they were Of the chambers
Hence there is scarcely any hearty
friendship, implying unreserved conf
dence and absolute trust, possible be-
tween men OF certain position; and
after schoolboy days and quite early
manhood the very word itself if used
only symbolically, and ceases to be OF
vital power or substance.
1t friendship is hard to maintain be.
tween man and man, it is still more AZ
between man and woman; SO hard. in
deed, that most people hold il to I've
impossible. Yet many women think
it feasible; all wish it; and probably q
few have proved it. But these ara ne
eessariiy so few that they cannot be
saken as class. nor. their experiepc &C
accepted as more than the proof of a
rare possibility. Still there are hun
ureos OF women to whom a mans
friendship is their ideal of human af.
fection. They do not want the eY.
citement of flirting, or the peril and
consequences of serious love-makinp
tney want only the security and ass,ir.
tense friendship-none Of your vapid
ssnerM courtesy and universal charity
ahaArs,a friendship that means devo.
ZION and brotherhood IN one aud tb..
ensures exclusiveness in its own dorra.
NOT necessarily exclusiveness in alf ra>
iations, but only in it's own; for nan,
OF these friend-desring women will ac'
cept quite cheerfnlly the fact of ~.
shs, VINO seldom sympathizes with he,
husbands platonic attachments: but +
the wife will suffer them they will ner.
mt her, and make the best of sucl, nh
slruetion as she may cause. They ar,
rarely allowed this exercise of thei,
xosoearance. Here and there an al,
laml.y lawyer or doctor, who know,
all aboutthelr :. s.fairs and ailments, ant
has the whole row OF ,n.cusehold skele
tSps Of by, by heart, sticks ~ ;, then
t tibsuag f;pa the changes and chances o.
FAX, for somehow q long nrefsss;o NC,
connection seems to give a kind 81
Rtesc.iptive right to close personal
..ehusiilp, and no one thinks any harm,
Oh, ans ne. And sometimes an old love,
h mmT aas married, and makes good
IN" san y. enough, retains so much feel.
ab S -. n. sae laol Of his youth, now prob.
ao.y passing into the fading flower ss
e take her affairs in hand, and nrote y
See interests, perhaps at copsidsrshls