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Celia into whose ear she can pour the history of her joys and sorrows, to whom she can turn for advice, and lenient judgment, and comprehending sympathy.
There are trivial domestic difficulties, petty annoyances, perplexing positions, which no woman of tact will trouble and bewilder her husband by relating to him. If he is a man of decided intellect, he will not attach any importance to these small crosses, will not even understand these minor miseries, and the wife is thrown back upon her own resources, vexed and disheartened by her failing attempt to enlist his aid or sympathy. If he is a man of limited mental powers, he will be more annoyed than she, and will only increase her vexations without disentangling a single thread of the fine web of dilemmas into which she is snared. But to a sympathetic female companion, a woman may enter into all the details of these insignificant trials, and, clasping a friend's hand, she may search for and discover the clue that can guide her out of her domestic labyrinth.
The higher love, the love for man, neither absorbs nor forbids the lower, the friendship for woman. They are distinct, emotional capacities, which may be co-existent in one heart. They are evidences of a rich, spiritual organization. If they dwell together in pristine purity, one affection strengthens rather than weakens the other.
Who can deny that two women, through a mys-