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.
*
I could have thought he had been eaves-dropping at the
doors of my heart, so entire was the coincidence between
his writing and my thought.
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