doubt to assail her. Too often, within our own memory even, has the
slender yet firm hand of a woman been seen outstretched to snatch the
life of a brother, husband or friend from the sluggish and perilous
stream which runs slowly but surely on towards a hopeless ruin. "The
mere idea," says George Eliot, "that a woman had a kindness towards
him, spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards
hers" and "there are natures," she tells us, "in which, if they love
us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration;
they bind us over to rectitude and purity by their pure belief about
us, and our sins become that worst kind of sacrilege which tears down
the invisible altars of trust. If you are not good, none is good.
Those little words may give a terrific meaning to responsibility, may
hold a vitriolic intensity for remorse." Will anyone dispute it?
Moreover, it is the teaching of the only true philosophy by which men
should regulate their interior selves: that we "love one another,"
that we mutually assist and encourage one another, that we sympathise
with each other in our joy and sustain one another in sorrow. Now,
where a natural sympathy paves the way for the practice of this lesson
of charity, how easy it is for men to bestow a beautiful living
interpretation upon the Divine ordination concerning our mutual
relationships.

The idea that a staunch and unswerving friendship is capable of
existing between two women has become quite obsolete and exploded in
our day. It is generously admitted that the frivolous tendencies which
are innate in us have too much of the upper hand to sanction any
sentiment which pre-supposes a self abnegation or exalted
disinterestedness on our part. This is a serious heresy which may
possibly be accounted for simply enough.