;--anyhow, family
ties are the most God-given of all, and friendship should help us to
fulfil family claims better, instead of making us neglect them. The best
test of whether your love for an outside person is of the right kind, is,
does it make you pleasanter at home? Mr. Lowell mentions an epitaph in the
neighbourhood of Boston, which recorded the name and date of a wife and
mother, adding simply, "She was so pleasant."

We realize that we ought to make the world better than we find it, but we
do not realize how much more we should succeed in doing so if we made it
brighter,--a task which is in everybody's power. We are all ready to bear
pain for others, but we overlook the little ways in which we might give
pleasure. "Always say a kind word if you can," says Helps, "if only that
it may come in perhaps with a singular opportuneness, entering some
mournful man's darkened room, like a beautiful firefly, whose happy
circumvolutions he cannot but watch, forgetting his many troubles."

And there is one tiny little suggestion I would make to you, so small it
will not fit on to any of my larger headings. Do not make fun of your
friend's little mishaps, little stupidities, losing her luggage, having
said the wrong thing, or having a black on her face when she especially
wished to look well! Your remark may be witty, but it does not really
amuse the victim. I know it is very good for people to be chaffed, and I
do not wish them to lose this wholesome bracing. And yet we have a special
clinging to some tactful friends who never let us feel foolish.

Another test you should apply to Friendship is, does it lead to idle
words? Every one likes talking about their neighbours, and dress, and
amusement, but we need to be careful that kindliness and nice-mindedness
are not sacrificed, and that all our interests are not on that level. Many
think that a woman's interest can rise no higher, and many girls and many
women give colour to what you and I think a slander on us! We all like
these things, but we all like higher things too, and we need to encourage
the higher part of us because it so soon dies away. You know better than I
do how much of your own talk may be silly chatter--or worse--flippant or
wrong talk, which you would stop if an older person were by. I have heard
High Schools strongly objected to because they made the girls so full of
gossip, about what this or that teacher said, or what some girl did, till
their people hated