| The Building of Character |
Chapter 16 |
Page 2 |
There are some people who make it very hard for others to be their friends. They put friendship to unreasonable tests. They make demands upon it to which only the largest patience and the most generous charity will submit.
There are some persons who complain that they have no friends, and ofttimes the complaint may be almost true. There are none with whom they have close personal friendship. They have no friend who is ready to share in all their life, rejoicing with them in their joys, and bearing beside them and with them their load of care, sorrow, or anxiety. They seem without real companionship, although all about them throng other lives with the very things of love for which their hearts are crying out.
These unfriended ones think the fault is with the other people, whom they regard as cold, uncongenial, selfish. But really the fault is with themselves. They make it all but impossible for anyone to be their close personal friend. Nothing less holy and less divine than mother-love can endure the exactions and demands they put upon those who would be glad, if they could, to stand in the relation of friends to them.
Page 2