the sweeter and the pleasanter is the idea. In America a girl may
form a friendly intimacy with any young man she fancies, and though
she may not be free from little jests and good-humoured joking, there
is no injury to her from such intimacy. It is her acknowledged right
to enjoy herself after that fashion, and to have what she calls a
good time with young men. A dozen such intimacies do not stand in her
way when there comes some real adorer who means to marry her and is
able to do so. She rides with these friends, walks with them, and
corresponds with them. She goes out to balls and picnics with them,
and afterwards lets herself in with a latchkey, while her papa and
mamma are a-bed and asleep, with perfect security. If there be much
to be said against the practice, there is also something to be said
for it. Girls on the other hand, on the continent of Europe, do not
dream of making friendship with any man. A cousin with them is as
much out of the question as the most perfect stranger. In strict
families, a girl is hardly allowed to go out with her brother; and I
have heard of mothers who thought it indiscreet that a father should
be seen alone with his daughter at a theatre. All friendships between
the sexes must, under such a social code, be looked forward to as
post-nuptial joys. Here in England there is a something betwixt the
two. The intercourse between young men and girls is free enough to
enable the latter to feel how pleasant it is to be able to forget for
awhile conventional restraints, and to acknowledge how joyous a thing
it is to indulge in social intercourse in which the simple delight of
equal mind meeting equal mind in equal talk is just enhanced by the
unconscious remembrance that boys and girls when they meet together
may learn to love. There is nothing more sweet in youth than
this, nothing more natural, nothing more fitting, nothing, indeed,
more essentially necessary for God's purposes with his creatures.
Nevertheless, here with us, there is the restriction, and it is
seldom that a girl can allow herself the full flow of friendship with
a man who is not old enough to be her father, unless he is her lover
as well as her friend. But cousinhood does allow some escape from
the hardship of this rule. Cousins are Tom, and Jack, and George,
and Dick. Cousins probably know all or most of your little family
secrets. Cousins, perhaps, have romped with you, and scolded you,
and teased you, when you were youn