The Golden Censer Part 28

HELP OTHERS.

If any members of your family have the love of books, aid them in satisfying it. Such are the salt of the earth. They are the blazed trees in the dark forests of the present generations, to mark out that course which shall, in future ages, be the highway of the whole world.

FRIENDSHIP.

The friend thou hast, and his adoption tried, Grapple him to thy soul with hooks of steel.--Shakspeare.

I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd, "How sweet, how pa.s.sing sweet is solitude!"

But grant me still a friend in my retreat, Whom I may whisper "Solitude is sweet!"--Cowper.

"Whatever the number of a man's friends" says Lord Lytton, "there are times in his life when he has one too few." "Life,"

says Sydney Smith, "is to be fortified by many friendships." Says Bishop Hare: "Friendship is love without its flowers or veil." "A faithful friend is the true image of the Deity," said Napoleon, who never believed he had a true friend not a born fool. "A friend loveth at all times," says the Bible. Says Herr Gotthold: "with a clear sky, a bright sun, and a gentle breeze, you will have friends in plenty, but let fortune frown and the firmament be overcast, and then your friends will prove

LIKE THE STRINGS OF THE LUTE,

of which you will tighten ten before you find one that will bear the stretch and keep the pitch." "What an argument in favor of social connections," says Lord Greville, "is the observation that by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasures we have more." Horace Walpole has given clear expression to one of the chief pleasures of friendship:

"OLD FRIENDS

are the great blessings of one's latter years. Half a word conveys one's meaning. They have memory of the same events, and have the same mode of thinking. I have young relations that may grow upon me, for my nature is affectionate, but can they grow old friends? My age forbids that. Still less can they grow companions. Is it friendship to explain half one says? One must relate the history of one's memory and ideas; and what is that to the young but old stories?" "Fast won, fast lost," says Shakspeare. Says Dr. Johnson: "If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair!"

ALL THROUGH THE WRITINGS OF THE SAGES

on this subject there is a tinge of melancholy. "There are no friends!"

says Aristotle. "There have been fewer friends on earth than Kings," says the poet Cowley. Why is this? Let us peer into the solemn question. The ideal of true manhood is easily formulated. Alas! what an abyss separates a man's daily life, as it is, from that high quality he has pictured in his imagination. We are all the time reaching for

THINGS WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND,

and could not a.s.similate with if they were placed at our disposal. In this way a weary, well-read novel-reader, worn out in all lines of light letters, enters a circulating library, and queruously asks: "Have you any new books?" She expects a negative answer, and in that case would suffer a keen disappointment. The man says "Yes," and brings out several new books. Every one of these is new in every sense. It may be the most trivial set of pages yet printed in this era of scribblers, or, yet, it may be a great work, worthy of the attention of the thoughtful, and the commendation of the pure in heart. n.o.body can tell. Then, illogically, she asks: "Is this good?" or "Is that good?" and upon being reminded that she wanted something new or nothing, she asks for something by May Agnes Fleming, or Mary Jane Holmes, and goes off happy, to re-read those expressions which have so well pleased her in the past.

I think I espy in this exhibition of the working of the mind in a rude and unsatisfactory state

A GENERAL PRINCIPLE,

just as potent in the mighty brain of Sir Isaac Newton or of Louis Aga.s.siz. Man idealizes the affair of friendship. He forgets whether he really wants it or not, and then persistently inquires for it. It is not in the library of possibilities. He therefore goes off angry and disappointed. Could he get a glimpse at it, I am afraid he would walk away satisfied with something more nearly en rapport with his nature and his habits. Let us view this golden word friendship as man idealizes it: Being a changeable thing, he views friendship (of which he knows nothing), entirely by comparison with something of which in its turn he knows but little. This something is always a mother's love for her son, notorious as the strongest affection shown by our species. He therefore doubles up this marvelous fact of a mother's love, and creates in his imagination a reciprocatory agency co-respondent to this mother's love.

Now, with this magnificent product of invention, he goes forth into the world, seeking for some man upon whom he may bestow a mother's love (of which the "bestower" is entirely incapable), and who will, in payment, respond with a mother's love (of which that man would, of course, be also incapable). In the jargon of electricity a positive and a negative are absolutely necessary to electric energy.

A MOTHER'S LOVE

is a deplorably one-sided action, but it is the highest and n.o.blest of the faculties of affection. Anything beyond it is ideal, made up of two positives, and a thousand years ahead of us. Is it any wonder that when man makes his experiments with the mother's love which he supposes himself capable of bestowing that a universal wail arises, or that Shakspeare, the greatest of mortal minds, brought in those awful verdicts against mankind--"Lear" and "Timon of Athens"?

I THINK THAT IS WHY

the very deepest philosophers grow sad when they touch the question of friendship. The problem is itself the saddest of commentaries upon the weakness of our higher faculties. Separate man from his wife and family and view him in his relations to other persons similarly placed, and the result is not only unsatisfactory, but distressing to a mind anxious to hold to a good opinion of humanity. Put to the right test the quality of human friendship is found to be highly strained--to be liable to curdle in the first thundershower--to sour upon the sensitive stomach. We at once behold mankind forced to flee to G.o.d's kind inst.i.tution of the family and the home to escape a desolation of the heart which follows fruitless efforts to kindle a blaze out of the damp driftwood of life's general a.s.sociations.

Now, what is possible? Spot friendship is possible, and delightful.

"To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day." Man is a social animal. He "gregates," he flocks. Of nothing am I fonder than the sparkle of a friend's eye, and the gabble of half an hour, or three hours. But I ought not to build on any future gabbles, for, to-morrow, lo! my friend may have discovered my ign.o.ble reality, whereas he has heretofore been shaking hands with my n.o.ble ideality.

ANOTHER THING

should always be considered: "Kindred weaknesses" says Bovee, "induce friendships as often as kindred virtues." Here is Herder's beautiful view: "As the shadow in early morning, is friendship with the wicked; it dwindles hour by hour. But friendship with the good increases, like the evening shadows, till the sun of life sets." "People young, and raw, and soft-natured," says South, "think it an easy thing to gain love, and reckon their own friendships a sure price of any man's: but when experience shall have shown them the hardness of most hearts, the hollowness of others, and the baseness and ingrat.i.tude of almost all, they will then find that

A TRUE FRIEND IS THE GIFT OF G.o.d,

and that He only who made hearts can unite them." Says the wise Lord Bacon: "It is a good discretion not to make too much of any man at the first; because one cannot hold out that proportion," and that is so, for some of the strongest bonds of friendship ever felt have been woven without thought of pleasure on either side at the commencement.

"Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided." "I am distressed for thee, my brother, Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, pa.s.sing the love of woman."

"Very few friends," says Sydney Smith, "will bear to be told of their faults; and, if done at all, it must be done with infinite management and delicacy; for if you indulge often in this practice, men think you hate, and avoid you. If the evil is not very alarming, it is better, indeed, to let it alone, and not to turn friendship into a system of lawful and unpunishable impertinence. I am for frank explanations with friends in cases of affront. They sometimes

SAVE A PERISHING FRIENDSHIP,

and even place it on a firmer basis than at first; but secret discontent must always end badly."

Let us love our friends for what they are to-day--not for what they will be when we come to make unreasonable demands on them. The sun is beautiful and delightful. It will not shine for us in the night nor, in the daytime shine for us alone. We were bereft of our minds did we, therefore, enter a cave and forswear all further pleasure in its genial rays.

IT IS EASIER TO RAIL

against friendship than to enact our parts in that drama of life which is to elevate the term. Thus we hear Goldsmith cry--

What is friendship but a name, A charm that lulls to sleep, A shade that follows wealth or fame, And leaves the wretch to weep.

Yet this same Goldsmith was a burden on his friends. He did his duty to posterity, in leaving them beautiful literature and song, but to his own a.s.sociates he was unsparing in his good-natured demands. It is safe to say that he who tries to enn.o.ble friendship is best worthy of the name of friend, and he who belittles it, has fewer claims to man's humanity.

Everytime we deny the existence of a satisfying, friendship, we proclaim aloud our own baseness. Let us avoid it.

ENVY

Envy will merit as its shade pursue, But, like a shadow, proves the substance true.

Pope.--Essay on Criticism.