It Is Even Painful, If He Is To Go, That He Should
Linger So Long.
If he must go, let him go quickly.
Have you any
_last_ words? Alas, it is only the word of words, which you have
so long sought and found not; _you_ have not a _first_ word yet.
There are few even whom I should venture to call earnestly by
their most proper names. A name pronounced is the recognition of
the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name
aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.
Yet reserve is the freedom and abandonment of lovers. It is the
reserve of what is hostile or indifferent in their natures, to
give place to what is kindred and harmonious.
The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate.
When it is durable it is serene and equable. Even its famous
pains begin only with the ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers,
though all would fain be. It is one proof of a man's fitness for
Friendship that he is able to do without that which is cheap and
passionate. A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The
parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and
know no other law nor kindness. It is not extravagant and
insane, but what it says is something established henceforth, and
will bear to be stereotyped. It is a truer truth, it is better
and fairer news, and no time will ever shame it, or prove it
false. This is a plant which thrives best in a temperate zone,
where summer and winter alternate with one another. The Friend
is a _necessarius_, and meets his Friend on homely ground; not on
carpets and cushions, but on the ground and on rocks they will
sit, obeying the natural and primitive laws. They will meet
without any outcry, and part without loud sorrow. Their relation
implies such qualities as the warrior prizes; for it takes a
valor to open the hearts of men as well as the gates of castles.
It is not an idle sympathy and mutual consolation merely, but a
heroic sympathy of aspiration and endeavor.
"When manhood shall be matched so
That fear can take no place,
Then weary _works_ make warriors
Each other to embrace."
The Friendship which Wawatam testified for Henry the fur-trader,
as described in the latter's "Adventures," so almost bare and
leafless, yet not blossomless nor fruitless, is remembered with
satisfaction and security. The stern, imperturbable warrior,
after fasting, solitude, and mortification of body, comes to the
white man's lodge, and affirms that he is the white brother whom
he saw in his dream, and adopts him henceforth. He buries the
hatchet as it regards his friend, and they hunt and feast and
make maple-sugar together. "Metals unite from fluxility; birds
and beasts from motives of convenience; fools from fear and
stupidity; and just men at sight." If Wawatam would taste the
"white man's milk" with his tribe, or take his bowl of human
broth made of the trader's fellow-countrymen, he first finds a
place of safety for his Friend, whom he has rescued from a
similar fate. At length, after a long winter of undisturbed and
happy intercourse in the family of the chieftain in the
wilderness, hunting and fishing, they return in the spring to
Michilimackinac to dispose of their furs; and it becomes
necessary for Wawatam to take leave of his Friend at the Isle aux
Outardes, when the latter, to avoid his enemies, proceeded to the
Sault de Sainte Marie, supposing that they were to be separated
for a short time only. "We now exchanged farewells," says Henry,
"with an emotion entirely reciprocal. I did not quit the lodge
without the most grateful sense of the many acts of goodness
which I had experienced in it, nor without the sincerest respect
for the virtues which I had witnessed among its members. All the
family accompanied me to the beach; and the canoe had no sooner
put off than Wawatam commenced an address to the Kichi Manito,
beseeching him to take care of me, his brother, till we should
next meet. We had proceeded to too great a distance to allow of
our hearing his voice, before Wawatam had ceased to offer up his
prayers." We never hear of him again.
Friendship is not so kind as is imagined; it has not much human
blood in it, but consists with a certain disregard for men and
their erections, the Christian duties and humanities, while it
purifies the air like electricity. There may be the sternest
tragedy in the relation of two more than usually innocent and
true to their highest instincts. We may call it an essentially
heathenish intercourse, free and irresponsible in its nature, and
practising all the virtues gratuitously. It is not the highest
sympathy merely, but a pure and lofty society, a fragmentary and
godlike intercourse of ancient date, still kept up at intervals,
which, remembering itself, does not hesitate to disregard the
humbler rights and duties of humanity. It requires immaculate
and godlike qualities full-grown, and exists at all only by
condescension and anticipation of the remotest future. We love
nothing which is merely good and not fair, if such a thing is
possible. Nature puts some kind of blossom before every fruit,
not simply a calyx behind it. When the Friend comes out of his
heathenism and superstition, and breaks his idols, being
converted by the precepts of a newer testament; when he forgets
his mythology, and treats his Friend like a Christian, or as he
can afford; then Friendship ceases to be Friendship, and becomes
charity; that principle which established the almshouse is now
beginning with its charity at home, and establishing an almshouse
and pauper relations there.
As for the number which this society admits, it is at any rate to
be begun with one, the noblest and greatest that we know, and
whether the world will ever carry it further, whether, as Chaucer
affirms,
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