Vesper Talks to Girls. Laura A. Knott
choose our pleasures, our books, our occupations, but we do not choose our friends. We only discover them. The formation of a friendship is an unconscious process and must be so. There can be nothing deliberate and premeditated about it. Why is it that one sees the best in you and another the worst? Why does one understand before you speak while another cannot understand even after you explain? If we could answer these questions we should be able to reduce friendship to a mathematical formula, which no one wishes to do. The mystery of it is one of its charms. One can only say as did Montaigne about his friend, “If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him I can only answer, because it was he, because it was I.” Some people attract us by a certain intuition of character. If the intuition be true and if there be adaptability and community of interests, a foundation exists for a close and enduring friendship.
The basis for friendship is personality. You have nothing to give your friend but yourself. You should, therefore, make heavy demands upon yourself. Can you offer your friend anything less than a constantly enriching life? Good intentions are not enough; there must be performance. You have probably asked yourself many times whether you deserve this high friendship. Perhaps you do not. Then resolve that you sometime will deserve it. You are interesting to your friend now. What can you do that you may be more so to-morrow?
Those who lack the power of making friends—and there are unfortunately many such—have one of two failings, or both. Often they are not sincere. The insincere person cannot be a true friend and may not have a true friend. We demand that our friends shall “ring true.” A much more common fault than insincerity is selfishness. One may be not positively and actively selfish but self-centered. The self-centered person does not know how to enter sympathetically into the feelings of others. Such persons should earnestly strive to share the joys and sorrows of those about them and to make the experiences of others their own. Sometimes we say of a person, “He has a genius for making friends.” Such persons have in an eminent degree the capacity for carrying close to their hearts the interests of others. Remember that unless you really care about the concerns and the welfare of others, there is no possible way to make them believe you do.
It is worth while to cultivate the art of making friends, or, rather, it is worth while to put forth every effort to make one’s self worthy of having friends. He who said that a friend “doubles our joys and halves our sorrows” might have expressed it even more strongly. The author of the Book of Ecclesiastes understood this when he wrote, “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him.”
You owe your friend, first of all, integrity of character and sincerity in all your dealings. With your friend you can be yourself, your real self. Any pretense, any deceit, any concealment of vital things will create a barrier that nothing can ever break down. You may or you may not admit your friend to the inmost recesses of your heart, but so far as you do admit her, there must be straightforward honesty. Integrity includes not only our dealings with our friends, it affects all our relations with others. The oft-quoted couplet from Lovelace expresses a truth which it behooves every one to take to heart who would be or would have a friend:—
“I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not honour more.”
No real friendship can exist without loyalty on both sides. It is the place of a friend to look after the interests of her friend as if they were her own. Much inspiration may be gained from studying the great friendships of history, such as that of David and Jonathan, of Ruth and Naomi, or of Tennyson and Hallam. Does your friendship in comparison with any one of these seem insignificant, even puerile? Then use the greatest friendship of which you know as a touchstone by which to test your own. For a real friend to speak an unkind word about an absent friend is unthinkable. To envy her, or to desire precedence over her in any way, is proof that your love for her is not real, but only assumed. How far should loyalty go? We all remember the answer of Christ when asked, “How often should I forgive my brother, until seven times?” His answer, until “seventy times seven,” means, as we all know, that there should be no limit to one’s forgiveness. In the same way, there should be no limit to your loyalty to your friend. It should be bounded only by her need and your power.
Of course, there should be community of interests and mutual trust and self-revelation. You have friends whom you admit only to the outer citadel of your heart. Some are “good company” and you love to share your pleasures with them, but in your serious moments you turn away from them. Others share your work, or some special interest in your life. But with your real friend you share the deepest things of your existence. She understands you in your highest moments, she respects your ideals and shares them, she comprehends the fundamental purpose of your life. Only friends who can share each other’s best selves know the highest friendship.
I have said that there must be mutual self-revelation. Never make the mistake of urging the confidence of your friend. Do not force any doors. If you have not the key that unlocks her heart, try to find it by making yourself worthy. Self-giving must be voluntary or it is in vain. We elicit from others only that which we have the power to make our own. Mutual trust would forever banish all petty jealousy. Your friend is not accountable to you for all her doings, and for you to act as if she were will only estrange her from you. Life is too rich in opportunity for her to be limited by any one relationship. If your friend’s life is to expand, her claims upon others and theirs upon her must be recognized.
If your friendship is a worthy one, you are constantly gaining in patience, in courtesy, and in self-control, for love is the greatest of all teachers. Do you promptly check each impatient word that springs to your lips? Do you show the friend who so easily overlooks your faults the same fine courtesy that you show to the stranger who would not overlook them? What a strange idea we sometimes have that love gives us the privilege of rudeness! Your friend may love you in spite of an occasional fit of ill-temper, but no one ever loved another better for it. To be exacting, domineering, or selfish may not drive your friend completely away from you, but it will not strengthen the tie that binds your hearts together.
There should be a certain equality between friends. I do not mean that love is not able easily to bridge over many kinds of inequalities, as that of a difference in station in life or in age, or even in education. I mean that a friendship is harmful when one of the friends is a parasite, receiving everything and contributing nothing. Self-respect demands that each shall give as well as receive.
In his essay on “Friendship,” Emerson says no truer word than this: “Your friend is he who makes you do what you can.” One must not be a fault-finder or a thorn in the flesh of one’s friends, yet friendship has no more sacred duty than to point out faults by showing the better way. “He who truly loves is irreconcilable to faults in one whom he loves; they blur the vision which always lies in his soul.”
On the other hand, it is especially the office of a friend to recognize the excellencies of his friend. “Your friend is he who tells you of your virtues and who insists upon them most when you are most inclined to doubt their existence.” Who of us is not at times sorely in need of this kindly office of a friend? In our moments of discouragement, when faith in self is at a low ebb, the true friend comes to us and by his faith in us restores the balance of life. And what a comfort then is that belief in us and in our powers and possibilities! Friends who do not perform this office, each for the other, as often as the opportunity arises, have missed much of the blessedness of true friendship!
Those who love know that love is not blind. Love has the truest sight. If you want to know what a person really is, do not ask one who hates him, but one who loves him. Yet love may blind itself. To shut your eyes to the faults of your friend is not the way to lessen those faults. To stand between her and the penalty which her deeds have justly brought upon her is to deprive her of one of the most important means of growth. If your affection is of a poor and narrow sort, you will constantly urge your friend to consult her own pleasure and interests in preference to those of others, in this way stifling in her every altruistic impulse. Acting and reacting upon each other in this way you will find that generous feeling and disinterested affection in both of you will constantly diminish. Any two people who love each other should cherish, each in the other, the