"A friend once won need never be lost, if we will be only trusty and true ourselves. Friends may part, not merely in body, but in spirit for a while. In the bustle of business and the accidents of life, they may lose sight of each other for years; and more, they may begin to differ in their success in life, in their opinions, in their habits, and there may be, for a time, coldness and estrangement between them, but not for ever if each will be trusty and true. For then they will be like two ships who set sail at morning from the same port, and ere night-fall lose sight of each other, and go each on its own course and at its own pace for many days, through many storms and seas, and yet meet again, and find themselves lying side by side in the same haven when their long voyage is past." CHARLES KINGSLEY. Friendship AUGUST 22 "The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay or dislike, hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint and too numerous for removal. Those who are angry may be reconciled, those who have been injured may receive a recompense; but when the desire of pleasing, and willingness to be pleased, is silently diminished, the renovation of friendship is hopeless: as when the vital powers sink into languor, there is no longer any use for the physician." _The Idler._ "... There is such a disaster, so to speak, as having to break off friendship.... In such cases friendships should be allowed to die out gradually by an intermission of intercourse. They should, as I have been told that Cato used to say, rather be unstitched than torn in twain.... For there can be nothing more discreditable than to be at open war with a man with whom you have been intimate.... Our first object then should be to prevent a breach; our second to secure that if it does occur, our friendship should seem to have died a natural rather than a violent death." CICERO. Friendship AUGUST 23 "Friends--those relations that one makes for one's self." DESCHAMPS. "Some one asked Kingsley what was the secret of his strong joyous life; and he answered, 'I had a friend.'" "The years have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons--none wiser than this: to spend in all things else, but of old friends to be most miserly." LOWELL. "The best wish for us all is, that when we grow old, as we must do, the fast friends of our age may be those we have loved in our youth." MASON. Jealousy AUGUST 24