 WOMEN FRIENDSHIFTS by Anna Cora-Mawet Richie. All the world gives ready credence to the possibility of friendship between man and man. Some people are even inclined to believe that the immutable attachment of restes and palades of Aeneas and Akhetes may be repeated among men in these inconstant modern times. But the devotion of woman to one of her own sex, the sincerity with which she clasped the hand or presses the lip of woman, the genuineness of her self-sacrifices daily made for a beloved sister, are the subjects of vast amount of skepticism. Philosophic writers, poets, wits, have openly declared their disbelief in existence of the strange phenomenon of woman friendships. Even Diana Mullick, who has written so many lines of woman which bear the imprints of truth and wisdom, who has solved so many of the enigmas inseparable from woman's nature, gravely shakes her head when she touches upon female friendships, and calls up such doubting host of ifs and buts to usher in the possibility of perfect love between women that we inevitably draw the inference that she sides with the unbelievers. On the other hand, Shakespeare, that intellectual miracle, as he has been called, whose seer-like vision pierced deeper than the eyes of grosser mortals, Shakespeare, whose magic plummet sounded the unreached, uncomprehended depths of the human soul, reveals the hearts of women united by adamantine links, instanced the clean fondness of Helena and Hermia in Midsummer Night's Dream. We Hermia, like two artificial gods, have with our needles created both one flower, both on one sampler sitting on one cushion, both warbling of one song, both in one key, as if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds had been incorporate, so we grew together, like to a double-cherry seeming-parted, but yet a unison in partition, two lovely berries molded on one stem, so with two seeming bodies but one heart, two of the first, like coats in heraldry, due but to one and crowned in one crest. We have another illustration of woman friendship in its consummate beauty portrayed in the passionate, protecting love of Beatrice for Hero, in much ado about nothing, and in As You Like It, a still stronger picture in the self- renouncing, absolute devotion for Roslyn of the gentle Celia, who startles her wrathful father with the declaration. If she be a traitor, why so am I? We have slept together, rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together, and where so ere we went, like Juno's swans, still we went coupled and unseparable. When the implacable duke banishes Roslyn, Celia replies, Pronounce that sentence, then, on me, my liege, I cannot live out of her company, Shakespeare against the world, for who knew the world won half so well? Not only are we impressed by the conviction that his glowing portraitures of woman friendship are life-drawn, not only have we perfect faith in the possibility of a thoroughly unselfish all-absorbing attachment between two women, but we entertain the belief that there are certain female minds, so constituted that a tender friendship with one of the same sex is positively indispensable to happiness. Such nature's experience and irresistible impulse to confide in one who, enlightened by her own yearnings and failings, can understand feminine wants and frailties, who can look upon feminine insufficiencies not from a strong manly, but a weak womanly point of view. A woman may be the most irreproachable wives to the best of husbands, and yet feel void in her affections, a chamber in her large heart unfulfilled, something needful lacking, if there be no Cecilia into whose ear she can pour the history of her joys and sorrows, to whom she can turn for advice, and lenient judgment, and comprehending sympathy. There are trivial domestic difficulties, petty annoyances, perplexing positions which no woman of tact will trouble and bewilder her husband by relating to him. If he is a man of decided intellect, he will not attach any importance to these small crosses, will not even understand these minor miseries, and the wife is thrown back upon her own resources, vexed and disheartened by her failing attempt to enlist his aid or sympathy. If he is a man of limited mental powers, he will be more annoyed than she, and will only increase her vexation without disentangling a single thread of the fine web of dilemmas into which she is snared. But to a sympathetic female companion, a woman may enter into all the details of these insignificant trials, and, clasping a friend's hand, she may search for and discover the clue that can guide her out of her domestic labyrinth. The higher love, the love for man, neither absorbs nor forbids the lower, the friendship for woman. They are distinct emotional capacities, which may be co-existent in one heart. They are evidences of a rich spiritual organization. If they dwell together in pristine purity, one affection strengthens rather than weakens the other, who can deny that two women, through a mysterious affinity, may become and recognize each other as sisters in heart? Who can doubt that there is a bond of sisterhood between their spirits, as real and as strong as the tie of blood between sisters? And if this is true, must not that internal kinship outlive even the deceivering stroke of death, and proclaim them true sisters in the great hereafter? But in this lower sphere, what name can we give to their attachment, but that of woman friendship? End of Woman Friendships by Anna Coral-Mawet Ritchie Read by Kelly S. Taylor