sure that friendship but usurped the name, unless it were purely
disinterested, endlessly durable, and beyond the reach of time and
circumstances to change it; and all were going forth in the full
certainty of finding friends, each one after the pattern of her own
imagination, the first speaker only excepted, who was fully determined
never to find any, or never to trust them, if she did.

I marked, with pained attention, the warm glow of expectation so soon to
be blighted; and, reflected deeply on the many heart-aches with which
they must unlearn their errors. I saw that each one was likely to pass
over and reject the richest blessing of earth, even in the very pursuing
of it, from having merely sketched, in imagination, an unresembling
portrait of the object of pursuit. "When friendship meets them," I said,
"they will not know her. Can no one draw for them a better likeness?"

It is the language of books, and the language of society, that friends
are inconstant, and friendship but little to be depended on; and the
belief, where it is really received, goes far to make a truth of that
which else were false, by creating what it suspects. Few of us but have
lived already long enough to know the bitterness of being disappointed
in our affections, and deceived in our calculations by those with whom,
in the various relationships of life, we are brought in contact. Perhaps
the aggregate of pain from this cause is greater than from any other
cause whatever. And yet, it is much to be doubted whether nearly the
whole of this suffering does not arise from our own unreasonable and
mistaken expectations. There are none so unfortunate but they meet with
some kindness in the world; and none, I believe, so fortunate but that
they meet with much less than they might do, were it not their own
fault.