True Friendship

  Here is a paragraph I read this morning in Christy, the novel I am currently reading, in which Christy tells about her growing friendship with the mountain woman Fairlight Spencer. I've known this story for a long time, because the TV series from the 90's has been in my family since I was very young, but I was never a huge fan of the series; the casting isn't that great and it just doesn't  capture the spirit of the novel. The book, however, is just amazing and I would highly recommend reading it if you haven't already! I thought this bit was very inspiring and so I decided to share it with you all.

  Christy, chapter 17

    Now I realized why these mountain people were shy with strangers. They had never learned the citified arts of hiding feelings or of smiling when the heart was cold. Friendship was dangerous to them because they had built up no protection against it. Once they let you in it must be into the deep places of the heart as Fairlight had with me. Though I had known he only four months, already I was far closer to her than members of my own family or girl friends whom I had always known.
   She was teaching me about true friendship too. Through Fairlight's eyes I came to know a quality of friendship which bore little resemblance to the casualness of our relationships back home. The mountain type of friendship was a tie of substance between people with a sort of gallant fealty about it. It had to do with a time in the past when there was no more final bond than a man's pledged word; when every connection of blood and family was firm and strong, forged in the past, stretching into the future.
   And so this kind of friendship was for life- yes, and for eternity too. One would never deceive or defraud a friend, nor allow him to be in need so long as you had one coin, one garment, or one meal to share with him. His sorrow was your sorrow; his joy, your cause for rejoicing too.