Project Gutenberg's The Friendships of Women, by William Rounseville Alger

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Title: The Friendships of Women

Author: William Rounseville Alger

Release Date: September 8, 2006 [EBook #19199]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRIENDSHIPS OF WOMEN ***

Produced by Edmund Dejowski

THE FRIENDSHIPS OF WOMEN.

THE
FRIENDSHIPS OF WOMEN
BY
WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER.

A GENTLE BUSINESS AND BECOMING
THE ACTION OF GOOD WOMEN.
Shakespeare.

BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1868.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867 by
WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court
of the District of Massachusetts.

CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON.

TO
ANNA CABOT LODGE,
A TRUE AND GENEROUS FRIEND,
THIS BOOK
IS INSCRIBED WITH THE DEEPEST SENTIMENTS OF ESTEEM
AND GRATITUDE

PREFACE.

A STATEMENT of the facts in which this book began may gratify the
curiosity of some of its readers.

While gathering materials for a History of Friendship, I was often
struck both by the small number of recorded examples of the sentiment
among women, which were discovered in my researches, and by the
commonness of the expressed belief, that strong natural obstacles
make friendship a comparatively feeble and rare experience with them.
Spurred by further thought, as well as by many talks, I kept on
exploring the subject. At length, so much matter was mustered that I
determined to insert in my work a distinct chapter on the Friendships
of Women. Still the subject grew in interest for me, and the bulk of
historic illustration swelled beyond the size of a chapter. Then I
decided to make a little treatise of it by itself.

The principle and sentiment of friendship deserve a much larger share
of the attention given, alike in the life and the literature of our
time, to the passion of love. One would infer from most of the
popular writings of the day, that love is the only emotion worthy of
notice. But surely there are in human nature other feelings, which
demand far more culture than they generally receive, feelings which
really play an important part in huma