Indeed, We
Cannot Have Too Many Friends; The Virtue Which We Appreciate We
To Some Extent Appropriate, So That Thus We Are Made At Last More
Fit For Every Relation Of Life.
A base Friendship is of a
narrowing and exclusive tendency, but a noble one is not
exclusive; its very
Superfluity and dispersed love is the
humanity which sweetens society, and sympathizes with foreign
nations; for though its foundations are private, it is, in
effect, a public affair and a public advantage, and the Friend,
more than the father of a family, deserves well of the state.
The only danger in Friendship is that it will end. It is a
delicate plant, though a native. The least unworthiness, even if
it be unknown to one's self, vitiates it. Let the Friend know
that those faults which he observes in his Friend his own faults
attract. There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid
for our suspicions by finding what we suspected. By our narrowness
and prejudices we say, I will have so much and such of you, my
Friend, no more. Perhaps there are none charitable, none
disinterested, none wise, noble, and heroic enough, for a true
and lasting Friendship.
I sometimes hear my Friends complain finely that I do not
appreciate their fineness. I shall not tell them whether I do or
not. As if they expected a vote of thanks for every fine thing
which they uttered or did. Who knows but it was finely
appreciated. It may be that your silence was the finest thing of
the two. There are some things which a man never speaks of,
which are much finer kept silent about. To the highest
communications we only lend a silent ear. Our finest relations
are not simply kept silent about, but buried under a positive
depth of silence never to be revealed. It may be that we are not
even yet acquainted. In human intercourse the tragedy begins,
not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence
is not understood. Then there can never be an explanation. What
avails it that another loves you, if he does not understand you?
Such love is a curse. What sort of companions are they who are
presuming always that their silence is more expressive than
yours? How foolish, and inconsiderate, and unjust, to conduct as
if you were the only party aggrieved! Has not your Friend always
equal ground of complaint? No doubt my Friends sometimes speak
to me in vain, but they do not know what things I hear which they
are not aware that they have spoken. I know that I have
frequently disappointed them by not giving them words when they
expected them, or such as they expected. Whenever I see my
Friend I speak to him; but the expecter, the man with the ears,
is not he. They will complain too that you are hard. O ye that
would have the cocoa-nut wrong side outwards, when next I weep I
will let you know.
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