A stool must have three legs if it is to support you, and two friends want a third interest to unite them, or the friendship will die away in unreasonable claims and jealousies; since “claimativeness” is the evil genius which haunts friendship, unless common sense and wholesome interests are at hand to help.  It is difficult, but necessary, to learn that affection is not a matter of will, except in family ties; that our friends love us in exact proportion as we appear to them lovable, that “the less you claim, the more you will have,” as the Duke of Wellington said of authority.  A very little humility would wonderfully lessen our demands upon our friends’ affections, and a very little wisdom would preserve us from trying to win them by reproaches.  How many coolnesses would be avoided could we learn to see that friendship, like all other relations of life, has more duties than rights.  Nothing so certainly kills love as reproaches; I do not believe any affection will stand it.  Our hurt feelings may seem to us tenderness and depth of feeling, but they are selfish:—­“fine feelings seldom result in fine conduct.”  If our love were perfectly selfless, we should be glad of all pleasure for our friend; failure in his allegiance to us would not change us, nothing would do that except failure in his allegiance to his better self.  We should love our friends not for what they are to us, but for what they are in themselves.  Of course, it may be said that fickleness to us is a flaw in his better self, but if we stop to think how many tiresome ways we probably have, we shall be lenient to the friends who show consciousness of them.

It is a natural instinct with all of us to claim love; those who seem most richly blessed with it probably have some one from whom they desire more than they receive; every one has to learn, sooner or later, that “an unnavigable ocean washes between all human souls,”—­

    “We live together years and years,
      And leave unsounded still
    Each other’s depths of hopes and fears,
      Each other’s depths of ill.

    “We live together day by day,
      And some chance look or tone
    Lights up with instantaneous ray
      An inner world unknown.”

We all have to learn, sooner or later, that nothing less than Divine Love can satisfy us, but because our natural longings are so often denied, some say they are wrong and should be crushed out.  It is wrong to give way to them, to yield to the tendency which is so strong with some, to let all their interests be personal,—­to care for places and natural beauty and subjects only because they are associated with people,—­to let life be dull to us unless our personal affections are in play.  Women ought to make it a point of conscience to learn to care for things impersonally.  We are too apt to be like Recha in “Nathan,” when she only looked at the palm trees because the Templar was standing under them; when her mind recovered its balance, she could see the palm trees themselves.