This ballast is worthy, individual character. It would be more exact to say there can be no true friendship without individual character. Although many elements constitute the character of the true friend, yet two elements are essential--sincerity and tenderness. Sincerity is the soul of every virtue, while true words, simple manners, and right actions make up the body. If the soul of virtue is present one does not always demand the presence of the body, but if the body of virtue is absent, one had better take a search after the soul. If sincerity is unquestioned, words, manners, actions have great liberty; but if words, manners and actions are lacking in straight-forwardness, it is time to question sincerity. This is true in all human affairs involving motive and conduct. Especially is it true in friendship. Sincerity knows its own. By a glance it penetrates the very heart of its true friend, and leaves translucent and transparent its own. Sincerity gives steadfastness and constancy to friendship. Insincerity mars and breaks friendship. Who has not seen a soul spring into life through the love of a radiant friendship; and then following a series of hollow pretenses, insincerities, that friendship fails, and the beautiful creature stifles and dies. As one tells us, "such a death is frightful, it is the asphyxia of the soul!" Then, tenderness is an essential element in the character of a friend. Says Emerson: "Notwithstanding all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love, like a fine ether." With Emerson, we believe that every person carries about with him a certain circle of sympathy within which he, and at least one friend, may temper and sweeten life. Much of the kindness of the world is simply breathed, and yet what an aroma of good cheer it sheds in grateful lives. Tenderness possesses a sensitiveness of sympathy to an extreme degree. It shrinks from the sight of suffering. It treats others with "gentleness, delicacy, thought-fulness, and care. It enters into feelings, anticipates wants, supplies the smallest pleasure, and studies every comfort." Says one: "It belongs to natures, refined as well as loving, and possesses that consideration of which finer dispositions only are capable." Tenderness is a heart quality. It is the luxury of a pure and intense friendship. It tempers one's entire nature, making his whole being sympathetic with grace and favor. It is manifest in the relaxing feature, in the penetrating glance, in the mellowing voice, in the engracing manners, and in the complete obliteration of time and distance, while with one's friend. We recall the friendly visits spend with our friend, Lawrence W. Rowell, during his medical course in Rush College, Chicago, while we were in attendance at the Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois. Rowell was intellectual, spirited, gifted in conversation, highly sympathetic, informed, critical, yet