onness of affection first
profanes, then destroys it.

It is a pathetic sign of the diviner nature of women, that they
conceal sorrow more easily than joy, while men conceal joy more
easily than sorrow. The lover of Adelaide de Comminge having joined a
convent of Trappists, she followed him thither, disguised as a man,
took the vows, and was not recognized by him until on her death-bed.
Man is not capable of such pure devotion: only a woman could thus
forbear, and be content with the secret joy of the beloved presence.
Man demands action: woman demands emotion. Friendship between two
youths is martial, adventurous, a trumpet-blast or a bugle-air:
friendship between two girls is poetic, contemplative, the sigh of a
harp-string or the swell of an organ-pipe.

Woman needs friendship more than man, because she is less self-
sufficing. She is much more apt than he to think the form in the
mirror is lovely, but not to think it of herself. Milton's Eve was
startled with a shy delight at the fair shape in the fountain, never
dreaming that it was herself. Men are flutes: they must be filled
with the warm breath of a foreign sympathy. Women are harpsichords:
they have all the conditions of music in themselves, and only need to
be struck. But, containing so much, their need of being struck is the
greater. Charlotte Bronte, in her sad, weary life, full, as she
expressed it, of loneliness, of longing for companionship, had two
faithful and precious friends; her "dear, dear E.," and her "good,
kind Miss W." To the former she writes, "I am at this moment
trembling all over with excitement, after reading your note: it is
what I never received before, the unrestrained pouring out of a warm,
gentle, generous heart. If you love me, do, do, do come on Friday. I
shall watch and wait for you; and, if you disappoint me, I shall
weep." Few sayings are more touching than that which Thackeray heard
a woman utter, that she would gladly have taken Swift's cruelty to
have had his tenderness. Now, is it not true that the intenser need
naturally implies the keener search and the more copious finding?

The great reason why the friendships of women are not more frequent
and prominent than they are is, that the proper destiny of woman
calls her to love; and this sentiment, in its fullness, is usually
too absorbing to leave room and force for conspicuous friendships.
With men the other sentiments are not so much suspended or engulfed
by conjugal and