We must accept or refuse
one another as we are. I could tame a hyena more easily than my
Friend. He is a material which no tool of mine will work. A
naked savage will fell an oak with a firebrand, and wear a
hatchet out of a rock by friction, but I cannot hew the smallest
chip out of the character of my Friend, either to beautify or
deform it.
The lover learns at last that there is no person quite
transparent and trustworthy, but every one has a devil in him
that is capable of any crime in the long run. Yet, as an
Oriental philosopher has said, "Although Friendship between good
men is interrupted, their principles remain unaltered. The stalk
of the lotus may be broken, and the fibres remain connected."
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill
without. There may be courtesy, there may be even temper, and
wit, and talent, and sparkling conversation, there may be
good-will even, - and yet the humanest and divinest faculties pine
for exercise. Our life without love is like coke and ashes. Men
may be pure as alabaster and Parian marble, elegant as a Tuscan
villa, sublime as Niagara, and yet if there is no milk mingled
with the wine at their entertainments, better is the hospitality
of Goths and Vandals.
