uction:

e two

n our

liness

itself

tance,

gnize

w all

II):

aloof

real

y be hree

S."

self

And will reveal thy disgraceful strife.

And many a one is friend as companion at table,
And will not abide in the day of thy affliction.
Yea, in thy prosperity he will be as thyself,
And will speak roughly to thy servants.

If thou be brought low he will be against thee,
And will hide himself from thy face.

Separate thyself from thine enemies,
And be wary of thy friends."

It is this teaching of the Son of Sirach that gives the suggestion of Claude Mermet's epigram:

"Friends are like melons. Shall I tell you why?

To find one good you must a hundred try."

And the world's experiences bear witness to its central truth that the imitations of friendship are as numerous as its highest attainment is rare.

Let it not be supposed, however, that the essential limitations of the loftiest friendship restrict the possibilities of the most sincere and attractive friendliness, toward others near or remote, on the part of him who is a true friend at the highest and best toward one above all. A real friendship is uplifting and expanding, taking him who is the friend away from himself, and opening his heart in a generous love beyond the possibility of its closing or cramping. He, indeed, who is capable of the loftiest friendship, can easiest attain to the loftiest standard of affection in every relation in life,—as husband, father, son, brother, or neighbor. The love that reaches to the highest is not likely to come short of any mark below the highest; and a love that is intensest at its focal center will glow with exceptional warmth from that center

toward the extremest circumference. "Oh! love one heart purely and warmly," says Jean Paul Richter; "then thou lovest all hearts after it; and thy heart in its heaven sees, like the journeying sun, in all that it looks uponfrom the dew-drop even to the ocean-nothing but mirrors which it warms and fills."

The limitations of friendship are in the possibilities of our nature to center our profoundest affections on an object that is capable of calling them forth at their best. The imitations of friendship are in those affiliations and alliances that depend upon personal interest, or personal convenience, or personal fancy, and that change with changes in the parties to them, as a true friendship does not.

But between the poorer imitations of a friendship, and a friendship at its highest and best, with its essential limitations in that sphere, there are gradations of genuine and joy-giving friendship. Even he who knows the fullest joy of soul-union with a true and congenial friend is sure to have that spirit of sympathetic friendliness which will cause him to be rightly counted as a friend by many; and some of his minor friendships are likely to be so hearty and so generous that only he and one other will ever know that the difference between his one realest friendship and all his other friendships is a difference in kind instead of a difference in degree.

He, moreover, who has never realized the measure of the highest friendship, and to whom, by his very nature, such a measure of friendship is unattainable, may find a delight and an inspiration in the measure of friendship he does exercise, such as he gains by no other means of

enjoyment and uplifting. And if such a man be unable to apprehend the absolute ideal of a transcendent friendship, he can at least be advantaged by his partial conceptions of an unselfish affection, toward which he strives in all his friendships and his friendlinesses.

While, as Solomon suggests, there is danger in an indiscriminate seeking of personal intimacies, there is a correspondent safeguard in the affection of hearts won through an unfailing friendliness of spirit. Oriental proverb has it:

As the

"He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere."

"The more we love, the better we are," says Jeremy Taylor; "and the greater our friendships are, the dearer we are to God." And Wordsworth's counsel to a child is:

"Of humblest friends, bright Creature! scorn not one."

There are hearts, however, which, while never realizing the highest friendship in its limitations, would never be satisfied with the imitations of friendship. We live in a world where not every precious seed comes to full fruition. Some falls where there is not much earth, and its upstarting blades wither away from lack of soil-nourishment; some springs up only to have its new life choked out by the crowding thorns of the exacting world; yet other is trodden under foot by the careless passer along the way. And so it is that all the possibilities of a high and ennobling friendship are sometimes missed through lack of opportunity of their fostering, through the crushing force of misunderstandings, or through the misrepresentations

of outside parties; causing those who might have been the best and truest of friends to live without even the advantages of unbroken friendliness.

"A word unspoken, a hand unpressed,

A look unseen, or a thought unguessed;
And souls that were kindred may live apart,
Never to meet or to know the truth;
Never to know how heart beat with heart,

In the dim past days of a wasted youth."

Yet no love is ever wasted; least of all can there be waste or loss in the love of an unselfish friendship. He whose heart swells or thrills with such a love, even while it aches with a sense of its misconception or its non-recognition, is himself the sure and permanent gainer from his loving; whether his friendship be known as a friendship at its best with its essential limitations, or be looked upon by all as only one of the imitations of friendship.

Y whom are the privileges and possibilities of this highest and purest of human relations, this unselfish, ever-outgoing, reverent and transcendent affection, attainable? Who can be real friends, knowing the joy and sharing the gains of the best and truest friendship with all its limitations, and in contrast with its imitations? Must friends be only of the one sex, or only of the other? or can they be of either or both? Is friendship at its highest necessarily limited to those who are not united by the ties of blood or marriage? or can it co-exist in its fulness with any and every sacred relation? These are questions which press themselves on the heart and thought, and in the answer of which there would hardly be an instant agreement among all.

Since the truest friendship is the purest and most unselfish love, it follows that whoever is capable of such a love is capable of friendship. And those who love each other with such a love are friends, whatever be the bar