"Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say unto him: Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired--they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly." THACKERAY. "Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant." SOCRATES. Friendship AUGUST 5 "There is nothing so bad for man or woman as to live always with their inferiors. It is a truth so important, that one might well wish to turn aside a moment and urge it, even in its lower aspects, upon the young people who are just making their associations and friendships. Many a temptation of laziness or pride induces us to draw towards those who do not know as much or are not in some way as strong as we are. It is a smaller tax upon our powers to be in their society. But it is bad for us. I am sure that I have known men, intellectually and morally very strong, the whole development of whose intellectual and moral life has suffered and been dwarfed, because they have only accompanied with their inferiors, because they have not lived with men greater than themselves. Whatever else they lose, they surely must lose some culture of humility. If I could choose a young man's companions, some should be weaker than himself, that he might learn patience and charity; many should be as nearly as possible his equals, that he might have the full freedom of friendship; but most should be stronger than he was, that he might for ever be thinking humbly of himself and be tempted to higher things." PHILLIPS BROOKS. Friendship AUGUST 6 "For good or evil a man's moral and spiritual outlook is altered by the outlook of his comrade. It is inevitable, and in all true comradeship it makes for truth, and generosity, and freedom. It is an incalculable enlargement of human responsibility, because it constitutes us, in a measure, guardians each of the other's soul. And yet, it is never the suppression of a weak individuality by a strong one. That is not even true discipleship, but spiritual tyranny. What the play of two personalities brings about is a fuller, deeper self-realisation on either side. The experience of comradeship, with all the new knowledge and insight that it brings into a life, can leave no ideal unchanged, but the change is not of the nature of a substitution, but of continuous growth. It is not mental or moral bondage, but deliverance from both.