I often shudder to hear two women at a luncheon
say, "Why not arrange to go to Europe together next year?" And yet I
solace myself with the thought, "Why not? If you considered! your list
of friends for a month, and selected the most desirable, you would
probably make even a worse mistake, for travelling develops hatred
more than any other one thing I know of; so, in addition to spoiling
your journey, you would also lose your friend--or wish you _could_
lose her!"
George Eliot has said that there was no greater strain on friendship
than a dissimilarity of taste in jests. But I am inclined to believe
George Eliot never travelled extensively, else, without disturbing
that statement, she would have added, "or a dissimilarity in point of
view with one's travelling companion."
It makes no difference which one's view is the loftier. It is the
dissimilarity which rasps and grates. Doubtless the material is as
much irritated by the spiritual as the poetic is fretted by the
prosaic. It is worse than to be at a Wagner matinee with a woman who
cares only for Verdi. One wishes to nudge her arm and feel a
sympathetic pressure which means, "Yes, yes, so do I!" It is awful not
to be able to nudge! Speech is seldom imperative, but understanding
signals is as necessary to one's soul-happiness as air to the lungs.
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