For, through all this gradation, the
difference of sex makes itself pleasurably felt. Down to the
most lukewarm courtesies of life, there is a special chivalry
due and a special pleasure received, when the two sexes are
brought ever so lightly into contact. We love our mothers
otherwise than we love our fathers; a sister is not as a
brother to us; and friendship between man and woman, be it
never so unalloyed and innocent, is not the same as
friendship between man and man. Such friendship is not even
possible for all. To conjoin tenderness for a woman that is
not far short of passionate with such disinterestedness and
beautiful gratuity of affection as there is between friends
of the same sex, requires no ordinary disposition in the man.
For either it would presuppose quite womanly delicacy of
perception, and, as it were, a curiosity in shades of
differing sentiment; or it would mean that he had accepted
the large, simple divisions of society: a strong and positive
spirit robustly virtuous, who has chosen a better part
coarsely, and holds to it steadfastly, with all its
consequences of pain to himself and others; as one who should
go straight before him on a journey, neither tempted by
wayside flowers nor very scrupulous of small lives under
foot. It was in virtue of this latter disposition that Knox
was capable of those intimacies with women that embellished
his life; and we find him preserved for us in old letters as
a man of many women friends; a man of some expansion toward
the other sex; a man ever ready to comfort weeping women, and
to weep along with them.
Pages:
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363