, puzzle over in vain. And
they may have puzzled you too, my thoughtful girl-readers, who want the
ideal friend you have read of or dreamed of in day-dreams, but neither
possess nor know how to acquire.

To begin with--What is friendship? and I am inclined to define it as a
bond of mutual affection, sympathy, and help. If it is lacking in any
one of these particulars, just so far does it fall short of ideal
friendship.

Test your present so-called friendship by these tests, and I think you
will find that any dissatisfaction you may feel in them can be accounted
for by a failure to pass one or other.

There is, perhaps, not much difficulty about the first of these. Young
people feel quickly and strongly, and if girls did not honestly love one
another, or imagine--also honestly--that they did, the friendship, if,
indeed, it could exist at all, would be shorn of half its charm. But
love must be fed, and will only starve on a diet of respect and
admiration, without a very large admixture of sympathy. Sympathy,
fellow-feeling, mutual sensibility--call it how we will--is a simple
necessity to our ideal friendship, and by no means compels the two
friends to unvarying likeness either in character or tastes. But our
ideal friends--let us call them Alice and Maud--must be united so wholly
by this subtle bond that the pleasure, pain, or interest of the one
touches, through her, the other, who shares in what I may call this
reflective way the emotion originating with her friend.

Alice, who does not personally care for music in the least, yet
thoroughly enjoys a concert, because she is feeling (reflectively) all
the time the keen delight with which Maud is listening to every note;
and Maud, for the same reason, has true pleasure in reading that rather
dry volume of essays, because that scattered throughout are sentiments
and expressions which she knows very well Alice will greatly appreciate.

Mutual sympathy between friends is, of course, the outcome of love; and
yet it is surprising how little sympathy sometimes exists between girls
who to all appearance are really fond of one another.

This may arise from selfishness, unselfishness, or unintelligence--that
density of mental vision which has never been educated to perceive the
subtle bonds which bind soul to soul.

Now let us take Edith and Amy as examples of an imperfect friendship, in
contrary distinction to the ideal or perfect. They are fond of one
another, but there