e made to bud and blossom. At least do not let us
allow the turmoil of every-day affairs to crowd out love. We have not
time to see our friend. A letter written to us with love and care is
hastily skimmed and thrown aside. We do not answer it for many weeks,
and then our haste is our apology for saying nothing we really care for.
And by and by the love grows faint. Perhaps our friend dies, and the
package of affectionate letters we once saved as precious lies forgotten
in a drawer. Our friend did not fail us, we should love her just as
dearly again if we were with her daily, but the love has been crowded
out.

Now, some of us are really overtasked with necessary work; but usually
our hurry comes from our ambition or our indolence. If love were really
first with us, we should find time for our friends.

But some of us are so placed that we are continually meeting new people
whom we can warmly love. Now there is a limit to the number of people
who can form a part of our daily life. It is possible to love a hundred
people dearly, but it is not possible to talk intimately with a hundred
people every day, or to write a hundred affectionate letters every week.
But because we cannot cling closely to so many, let us not believe that
we cannot cling closely to a few. Let us at least hold fast to a few
friends, and without trying to form a part of the lives of the rest meet
them all warmly when we do meet. We cannot love too much or too many
people, and loving one helps us to love another, but we can only fully
give ourselves to a few.

I seem to be speaking altogether of nourishing emotion, and we ought to
nourish noble emotions. But the task set especially to women is to
control less noble emotions. We know well enough what is our duty in
regard to jealousy, envy, and so forth, though so many of us who mean to
be good women do not make a very heroic struggle even here, and perhaps
justify our weakness by the plea that our feelings are strong.

I will therefore speak particularly of some of our failings which lean
to virtue's side. What is it, for instance, to be a sensitive woman? The
highest women are exquisitely sensitive, they respond to beauty, to
love, to truth, and goodness instantly. But suppose they also tremble at
ugliness, and shrink from pain? The two kinds of sensitiveness do often
exist together. The perfect woman would follow the example of Christ
and look through outward ugliness and suffering to inward beau