Has Not Your Friend Always
Equal Ground Of Complaint?
No doubt my Friends sometimes speak
to me in vain, but they do not know what things I hear which they
are not aware that they have spoken.
I know that I have
frequently disappointed them by not giving them words when they
expected them, or such as they expected. Whenever I see my
Friend I speak to him; but the expecter, the man with the ears,
is not he. They will complain too that you are hard. O ye that
would have the cocoa-nut wrong side outwards, when next I weep I
will let you know. They ask for words and deeds, when a true
relation is word and deed. If they know not of these things, how
can they be informed? We often forbear to confess our feelings,
not from pride, but for fear that we could not continue to love
the one who required us to give such proof of our affection.
I know a woman who possesses a restless and intelligent mind,
interested in her own culture, and earnest to enjoy the highest
possible advantages, and I meet her with pleasure as a natural
person who not a little provokes me, and I suppose is stimulated
in turn by myself. Yet our acquaintance plainly does not attain
to that degree of confidence and sentiment which women, which
all, in fact, covet. I am glad to help her, as I am helped by
her; I like very well to know her with a sort of stranger's
privilege, and hesitate to visit her often, like her other
Friends.
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