Even speech, at first,
necessarily has nothing to do with it; but it follows after
silence, as the buds in the graft do not put forth into leaves
till long after the graft has taken. It is a drama in which the
parties have no part to act. We are all Mussulmen and fatalists
in this respect. Impatient and uncertain lovers think that they
must say or do something kind whenever they meet; they must never
be cold. But they who are Friends do not do what they _think_
they must, but what they _must_. Even their Friendship is to
some extent but a sublime phenomenon to them.
The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in
some such terms as these.
"I never asked thy leave to let me love thee, - I have a right. I
love thee not as something private and personal, which is _your
own_, but as something universal and worthy of love, _which I
have found_. O, how I think of you! You are purely good, - you
are infinitely good. I can trust you forever. I did not think
that humanity was so rich. Give me an opportunity to live."
"You are the fact in a fiction, - you are the truth more strange
and admirable than fiction.
