The San Francisco call., 1904-12-20
Half Of Lovers and Married
Folks Woes Caused by
Intimate Friends.
By Dorothy Fenimore

E> one bit Of advice have 1 to offer
that sounds as cynical as l be-
lieve it to be sensible-keep your
intimate friend" outside the
paling of your happiness.
For fully one-half of the foolishness
in love affair is the intimate friend
responsible. For more than one-half of
the misery which comes from broken
engagement the intimate friend is to
blame. And in many a divorce it was
the intimate friend, man or woman,
who-wittingly or unwittingly-played
the serpent in the little private para
disc of domestic happiness.
To an unmarried woman in love, or
to wife, an intimate friend is the
dearest and most dangerous enemy,
both of herself and of her lover or hus-
band. She is a conspicuous invitation
written out on ones horizon to talk
over things that are more sacred in
the heart than on the lips. Rarely is
she wise enough, even if she is gener-
Gus enough. to tip the balance of conf
dence on the right side Of the scale.
II never run in at a neighbor's
house to spend an afternoon. 1 know
that I shall want to run in again the
next morning to take back all said
the day before. The unwise things you
say and don't take back get such a
deadly grip on you. Your indiscretions
Of speech are almost certain to become
sooner or later indiscretions Of conduct.
4 1ofx ILL
idle hands. have them in subsection.
But 1 must admit that he has my busy
tongue at his mercy"
She is right about it; the confidential
mood is the highroad to mischief. When
in your personal affairs you have COM
mitted yourself to any course by an
ill-considered opinion you have deliber-
ately tied a handkerchief over your
eyes; you can't help falling over the
things that get in your way.
Consistency, however trivial 1T may
appear to the philosophic mind is the
skeleton in the closet Of the ordinary
mortal. What we have said and done
is the implacable god in the car which
rides down our sincerity. The past as
we have lived it out in word and deed
is the heather idol before which ones
unregenerate soul bows down in slavish
worship.
The intimate friend deserves to be
blackballed from Cupid's club for an
other offense.
By her receptivity and sympathy
she breaks down ones self-reliance.
One learns to depend upon her judg-
ment, to see with her eyes, to think
with her mind. She is likely to run
ones courtship, and more than likely
to run it into the ground.
Oh lovers ALL be self-reliant in your
love. BY any other course you cheaper
yourself, and also the one to whom
you give your devotion.
Our uneXpressed thoughts live as
flowers do, without any further pur-
pose than just being flowers. And as
we sit quietly in the sweet solitude of
our little gardens there are melodfous
voices all about us which lift our souls
and bear them upward on winged fan
cies fair.
We are too hospitable when I'VE
open the garden gate and let outsiders
in.
For these same reasons married life
has no room in it for intimate friend
walled-in Eden.
1t is no wonder that many hus-
band regards with jealous dislike his
wifes intimate friend. He knows that
there are confided to this woman, who
is a stranger to himself, many Incl
dents which are sure to appear to her,
and to the people to whom she in her
turn relates them in a careless mo-
ment, as weather-cocks on the top of
his domestic edifice.
The world does love lover; but it
loves him as a robin loves an apple,
for the SAVIOR which it means to apply
to its own palate.
If lovers are wise. therefore, they
play a two-fold role upon the stage of
human experience. Between them
selves they study out what love is in
its purity and in its strong simplicity.
And the secrets of their spiritual re-
search they keep inviolate as a con-
sequence of nature. Bat before the
eyes of the wide public let them play
arother drama. the pretty passing
show of loves fair affectations.