No doubt there is often something a little grotesque or laughable in these youthful relations. An anecdote will illustrate it, and, at the same time, convey the corrective moral. There were a couple of school-girl friends, each of whom loved to do and experience whatever the other did or experienced. One of them accidentally set fire to the window-curtains in her chamber, and the house came near being burned down. She wrote word to her friend of the dangerous accident. The other at once proceeded carefully to set fire to the curtains in her chamber, so as to be just like her friend in everything.
One may well reprove, with a complacent smile of superiority, the folly of the act; but the sentiment underneath should never be ridiculed.
A harrowing instance of the suffering consequent on the overstrung feelings of girls is furnished by Margaret Fuller in the story of "Mariana," a vivid autobiographic leaf inserted in her "Summer on the Lakes." Much precious wisdom is learned, many cruel scars are received, in these sincere, though often fickle, connections--these inebriating preludes to the sober strain of existence. There is a touch of sadness in the thought that the earliest friendship of youth must so frequently fade and cease. But there is comfort for that sadness in the knowledge that the fair flowers of April are but precursors of those which June shall fill with the richer fragrance of a more royal fire.
Oft first love must perish Like the poor snow-drop, boyish love of Spring, Born pale to die, and strew the path of triumph Before the imperial glowing of the rose, Whose passion conquers all.
Some of the conditions for friendship between women are furnished in a high degree in the secluded intimacy of conventual life, with its stimulus of solitude and religious romance. Under such circumstances, Madame Roland, in her youth, had an ardent union with Angélique Boufflers. She had likewise a precious friendship of this kind with the two sisters, Sophie and Henrietta Cannet. Her description of the sisters' arrival at the convent, of the sensation which they made, and of her own love for them, is extrernel, graphic and spirited. Her letters to them, extending through many years, and reaching in number to near two hundred and fifty, give us one of the best record of the value and joy of a friendship whose parties, b: freely unbosoming themselves to each other, assuage every pang and double every delight.