BETWEEN OURSELVES

New Zealand Tablet, 20 August 1908, Page 37

BETWEEN OURSELVES

The girls who win their way into the inmost recesses rf others' hearts are not usually the most brilliant and gifted, but those who have sympathy, patience, self-forgetfulness, and that indefinable faculty of eliciting the better nature of others. Most of us know girls who have appealed to us in this way. We have many friends who are more beautiful and" gifted, But there is not one of them whose companionship- we enjoy better than that of tha girl who perhaps never makes a witty or profound remark, but whose simple quality of human goodness makes up for every other deficiency. And if there came a time of real stress when we felt that we needed the support of real friendship, we should choose above all to go to this sweet girl, certain that we should find intelligent sympathy, a charitable construction of our position and difficulties and readiness to assist -us beyond what we ought to take. Beauty of spirit is more than beauty of face and form, and remarkable intellectual qualities are not to be compared with unaffected human goodness and sympathy.