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 the very name of school.  If school friends talk much school gossip, they must weaken their minds and feel at a loss when out of their school set.  It is very “provincial” to have no conversation except the small gossip which would bore a stranger, and yet I fear many friends confine themselves to a kind of talk which unfits them for general society.  You prohibit “talking shop,” by which you sometimes mean subjects which are interesting to all intelligent people, and yet you talk gossiping “shop” about the mere accidents of school life.  But, unless you interweave thoughtful interests and sensible topics of conversation with your friendship, it cannot last.  There must be the tie of a common higher interest—­it may be a common work, or intellectual sympathy, or, best of all, oneness in the highest things—­but without this a mere personal fancy will not stand the monotony, much less the rubs and jars, of close intimacy.  A friendship, where the personal affection is the deepest feeling, is not a deep love, or of a high kind;—­we must in the widest sense love “honour more.”  “Love is a primary affection in those who love little:  a secondary one in those who love much” (Coleridge).