both by words and manners, to make others pleased with him and with
themselves." There are slight differences of character, opinion, and
interest; but there is no prevailing style, no singular or affected
customs. An unperceived interchange of ideas and kind offices produces a
delightful harmony of thoughts and sentiments; and the wish to please
inspires those affectionate manners, those obliging expressions, and
those unrestrained attentions, which alone render social unions pleasant
and desirable.




FRIENDSHIP.


This subject was forcibly presented to my mind by a conversation I
recently heard in a party of young ladies, and which I take as a pattern
and semblance of twenty other conversations I have heard in twenty
similar parties. Friendship was (as it very often is) the subject of the
discussion; and, though the words have escaped my memory, I can well
recall the substance of the remarks. One lady boldly asserted that there
was no such thing as friendship in the world, where all was insincerity
and selfishness. I looked, but saw not in her youthful eye and
unfurrowed cheeks any traces of the sorrow and ill-usage that I thought
should alone have wrung from gentle lips so harsh a sentence, and I
wondered where in twenty brief years she could have learned so hard a
lesson. Have known it, she could not! therefore I concluded she had
taken it upon trust from the poets, who are fain to tell all the ill
they can of human nature, because it makes better poetry than good.