There is no friendship so noble, but it is the product of the time; and a world of little finical observances, and little frail proprieties and fashions of the hour, go to make or to mar, to stint or to perfect, the union of spirits the most loving and the most intolerant of such interference. The trick of the country and the age steps in even between the mother and her child, counts out their caresses upon niggardly fingers, and says, in the voice of authority, that this one thing shall be a matter of confidence between them, and this other thing shall not. ***** There is not anything more bitter than to lose a fancied friend. ***** The habitual liar may be a very honest fellow, and live truly with his wife and friends; while another man who never told a formal falsehood in his life may yet be himself one lie-heart and face, from top to bottom. This is the kind of lie which poisons intimacy. And, vice versa, veracity to sentiment, truth in a relation, truth to your own heart and your friends, never to feign or falsify emotion--that is the truth which makes love possible and mankind happy. ***** But surely it is no very extravagant opinion that it is better to give than to receive, to serve than to use our companions; and, above all, where there is no question of service upon either side, that it is good to enjoy their company like a natural man. ***** A man who has a few friends, or one who has a dozen (if there be any one so wealthy on this earth), cannot forget on how precarious a base his happiness reposes; and how by a stroke or two of fate--a death, a few light words, a piece of stamped paper, or a woman’s bright eyes--he may be left in a month destitute of all. ***** In these near intimacies, we are ninety-nine times disappointed in our beggarly selves for once that we are disappointed in our friend; that it is we who seem most frequently undeserving of the love that unites us; and that it is by our friend’s conduct that we are continually rebuked and yet strengthened for a fresh endeavour. ***** ‘There are some pains,’ said he, ‘too acute for consolation, or I would bring them to my kind consoler.’ ***** But there are duties which come before gratitude and offences which justly divide friends, far more acquaintances. ***** Life, though largely, is not entirely carried on by literature. We are subject to physical passions and contortions; the voice breaks and changes, and speaks by unconscious and winning inflections; we have legible countenances, like an open book; things that cannot be said look eloquently through the eyes; and the soul, not locked into the body as a dungeon, dwells ever on the threshold with appealing signals. Groans and tears, looks and gestures, a flush or a paleness, are often the most clear reporters of the heart, and speak more directly to the hearts of others. *****