One class of his earlier friends were in many cases converted into enemies on this wise. Boon companions are easy to have, but cheap, superficial, fickle. Genuine friendship, on the other hand, generous community of life and aspiration, co-operative pursuit and enjoyment of the worthiest ends, is a rare and costly prize, requiring virtues and imposing tasks. Multitudes therefore are tempted to put up with jovial fellowship in the pleasures of the table and let the desire for an ennobling intercourse of souls die out. The parasitic and treacherous nature of most pot-fellowship is proverbial. How well Shakspeare paints it in his version of Timon! When the eyes of the generous Athenian were opened to the selfishness of his pretended friends he became so rankling a misanthrope that the Greek Anthology gives us this as the epitaph sculptured on his sepulchre: “Dost hate the earth or Hades worse! Speak clear! Hades, O fool! There are more of us here.” Forrest was not many years in learning how shallow, how selfish, how untrustworthy such comrades were. He had too much ambition, too much earnestness and dignity to be satisfied with a worthless substitute for a sacred reality. He would not let an ungirt indulgence of the senses in conviviality take the place of a consentient action of congenial souls in the enjoyment of excellence and the pursuit of glory. More and more, therefore, he withdrew from these scenes of banqueting, story-telling, and singing, and found his contentment more and more in books, in the repose and reflection of solitude, and in the society of a select few. The most of those whom he thus left to themselves resented his defection from their ways, and repaid his former favor and bounty with personal dislike and invidious speech.