BROKEN FRIENDSHIP CAN’T BE MENDED.

Patea Mail, Volume 1, Issue 15, 2 June 1875, Page 3

BROKEN FRIENDSHIP CAN’T BE MENDED.

Friendship is a good deal like china. It is very beautiful and durable as long as it is quite whole ; but break it, and all the cement in the world will never quite repair the damage. You may stick the pieces together so that, at a distance, it looks nearly as well as ever, but it won’t stand usage, and it won’t hold hot water. It is always ready to deceive you if you trust it, and it is on the whole a very worthless thing, fit only to be put away empty on a shelf and forgotten there. The finer and the more delicate it is, the more utter the ruin. A mere acquaintanceship, which needs only a little good humour to keep it up, may bo coarsely puttied like that old yellow bowl in the store-closet, but tenderness, and trust, and sweet exchange of confidence, can no more bo yours when angry words and thoughts have broken them, than can those delicate porcelain tea-cups which were splintered to pieces be restored to their original excellence. The slightest crack will spoil the true ring, and you had bettor search for a new friend than try to mend the old one. And all this has nothing to do with forgiveness. One may forgive and be forgiven, but the deed has been done, and the word said; the flowers and the gilding arc gone. The formal “ makingup,” especially between two women, is of no more avail than the wonderful cements that have made a cracked ugliness of the china vase that you expected to be your “joy for ever.” Handled delicately, washed to purity in the ■waters of truth, confided to no careless and unsympathising hands, friendship may last two •lives out, but it “ does not pay” to try to mend it. Once broken, it is spoiled for ever.