d care to do that, even if she did not care much about
her own soul.

Now, you will not do much by direct effort, but you will do an immense
deal by conquering your own besetting sin. In the "Hallowing of Work,"
Bishop Paget says, "Increased skill and experience and ability are great
gifts in working for others, but they do not _compare_ with the power
gained by conquering one fault of our own."

Friendship can be the most beautiful thing in the world: it can be the
silliest thing in the world. It can be the most lowering: it can be the
most ennobling. Nothing excites so much laughter and hard speaking in the
world as "schoolgirl friendships;" as often as not they are found among
older people, but schoolgirls have given a name to this particular kind of
folly, so it behooves schoolgirls to keep clear of it, and to deprive the
name of its point.

But can you help being sentimental if you are made like that? Some are of
good wholesome stuff, with an innate distaste for everything of the kind,
while to some it is their besetting sin.

You can at least take precautions; for instance, do not day-dream about
your friend,--brooding over the thought of her weakens your fibre more
than being with her.

Make a rule of life for yourself about your intercourse; walk and talk
with her more than with others, but at the same time sandwich those walks
and talks by going with other friends,--it is a great pity to narrow your
circle of possible friends by being absorbed in one person.

Do not write sentimental letters, and, finally, do not sit in your
friend's pocket and say "Darling." (If you wish to know how it sounds,
read "A Bad Habit," by Mrs. Ewing.)

I must confess that I believe in what is so often jeered at as "kindred
souls." Love is not measured by time; often we are truer friends through
some half-hour's talk, in which we saw another's real self, than through
years of ordinary meeting. But this is so different from the folly I speak
of, that I need not dwell on it; except to say that you will be spared
many disappointments if you are content with the fact that such moments of
sympathy have been, and do not look to have a permanent friendship on that
basis. When people draw the veil aside for a minute they generally put it
back closer than ever, and do not like to be reminded of the
self-revelation.

In the foolish friendships that make so much unhappiness, half the folly
lies in expecting the other person to be alway