I do not want a friend who shifts his ground when I do and who nods when I nod—my shadow can do that better—but one who helps me to truth and sound judgement.’ [Sidenote: C] Such is one way of applying a test. There is a second point of difference to be watched, as against the points of resemblance. It is not in all matters that a genuine friend is prompt to copy or commend us, but only in the best. _Not his to share our hates, but share our loves_, as Sophocles has it. Yes, and to share our right conduct and high principles, not our wrong and wanton deeds, unless perhaps—as a result of familiar association—some contaminating effluence, like that of ophthalmia, affects him to some extent with a blemish or a fault against his will. For instance, it is said that [Sidenote: D] Plato’s stoop, Aristotle’s lisp, King Alexander’s crook of the neck and harshness of voice in conversation, were tricks borrowed by their respective intimates. There are persons who, without knowing it, pick up from both the temperament and conduct of their friends most of what is characteristic of them. The time-server, however, is exactly like the chameleon. As the latter assimilates himself to every colour but white, so the time-server, though utterly unable to arrive at a likeness to your valuable qualities, leaves no discreditable one uncopied. He is like a bad painter, who, because beauty lies beyond the reach of his weak capacity, makes the strikingness of his portraiture [Sidenote: E] a matter of wrinkles, moles, and scars. So the toady becomes an imitator of dissoluteness, superstition, irascibility, harshness to servants, and distrust of friends and relatives. Not only is he by nature and of his own accord prone to the lower course; it is by imitating a baseness that he appears to be farthest from blaming it. A man who takes the higher line, and shows distress and vexation at his friends’ misdeeds, is dubiously regarded—a fact which accounts for the ruin of Dion with Dionysius, of Samius with Philip, and of Cleomenes with Ptolemy. But when a man desires to be, and to be thought, agreeable and to be depended upon, the worse the thing is, the more display he makes of liking it, as if the strength of his affection will not permit him to dislike even your vices, but makes him your [Sidenote: F] natural sympathizer in all circumstances. Such persons therefore insist upon sharing even involuntary and accidental shortcomings. When toadying an invalid, they pretend to suffer with the same complaint. In company with a person who is somewhat blind or deaf, they pretend to be dim-sighted and hard of hearing, like the flatterers of Dionysius, whose sight was so dull that they stumbled against each other and knocked over the dishes at dinner.