III

FRIENDSHIPS

Homesickness and friendships, how much and how vivid a part they play in the first year, or years, of school life!  An old coloured physician was asked about a certain patient who was very ill.  “I’ll tell you de truf,” was the reply.  “Widout any perception, Phoebe Pamela may die and she may get well; dere’s considerable danger bofe ways.”  I will tell you one truth about the first year of school life:  friends there will surely be, and homesickness there is likely to be,—­there is “considerable danger both ways.”

Even if a girl has never been away from home before, it is possible that she will not suffer from homesickness.  It is probable, however, that the new surroundings in which the girl finds herself, and the separation from those who are the centre of her personal life, will bring on an attack of this most painful malady.  It takes time to fit comfortably into the new surroundings, and meanwhile everything is strange.  Homesickness is not to be laughed at, but it must be less deadly, less fatal than some people think it, or there would not be so many recoveries.  Girls often weep when they enter school, and then after the long dreary years are really over, lived through, and the poor forlorn freshman is metamorphosed into the senior, they weep again.  Is it not strange that these seniors who wept on entering school should weep also when leaving it?  It looks in the end as if Phoebe Pamela were sure to get well.  Yet the effort to get well requires a fine effort at self-control,—­an effort every girl is the better for making, although it may take everything plucky in a girl to “back up” her intention to remain in school.  The earlier the student considers this question of homesickness the better.  Let her face its possibilities before she goes away from home, and make up her mind, if she is attacked, resolutely to overcome it.  If it comes, let her never give up the struggle, for, by giving in, she will only lose ground in every way, morally, socially, intellectually.  By her cowardice she will part with what she can never recover later.

Many temptations follow in the wake of homesickness, and the most serious of all is to make friends too rapidly.  It may be laid down as a rule that a friendship formed on this stop-gap principle, and too rapidly, is not likely to endure.  Such a friendship is not a sane or a wise relation, for friendship is like scholarship:  if it is worth anything at all it comes slowly.  Impulsive, quickly forced friendships are not wise investments; the very fact that they come so quickly implies an unbalanced state of idealizing, or lack of self-control.  This does not mean that one is not to form pleasant acquaintances from the very beginning of the school life.  Acquaintanceship always holds something in reserve and is the safest prelude to a deeper and more vital friendship.