A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS
BY GAIL HAMILTON
If things would not run into each other so, it would be a thousand timeseasier and a million times pleasanter to get on in the world. Let thesheepiness be set on one side and the goatiness on the other, andimmediately you know where you are. It is not necessary to ask thatthere be any increase of the one or any diminution of the other, butonly that each shall preempt its own territory and stay there. Milk isgood, and water is good, but don't set the milk-pail under the pump.Pleasure softens pain, but pain embitters pleasure; and who would notrather have his happiness concentrated into one memorable day, thatshall gleam and glow through a lifetime, than have it spread out over adozen comfortable, commonplace, humdrum forenoons and afternoons, eachone as like the others as two peas in a pod? Since the law ofcompensation obtains, I suppose it is the best law for us; but if it hadbeen left with me, I should have made the clever people rich andhandsome, and left poverty and ugliness to the stupid people;because--don't you see?--the stupid people won't know they are ugly, andwon't care if they are poor, but the clever people will be hampered andtortured. I would have given the good wives to the good husbands, andmade drunken men marry drunken women. Then there would have been onefamily exquisitely happy instead of two struggling against misery. Iwould have made the rose stem downy, and put all the thorns on thethistles. I would have gouged out the jewel from the toad's head, andgiven the peacock the nightingale's voice, and not set everything so athalf and half.
But that is the way it is. We find the world made to our hand. The wisemen marry the foolish virgins, and the splendid virgins marry dolts, andmatters in general are so mixed up, that the choice lies between nicethings about spoiled, and vile things that are not so bad after all, andit is hard to tell sometimes which you like the best, or which youloathe least.
I expect to lose every friend I have in the world by the publication ofthis paper--except the dunces who are impaled in it. They will neverread it, and if they do, will never suspect I mean them; while thesensible and true friends, who do me good and not evil all the days oftheir lives, will think I am driving at their noble hearts, and will atonce fall off and leave me inconsolable. Still I am going to write it.You must open the safety-valve once in a while, even if the steam doeswhiz and shriek, or there will be an explosion, which is fatal, whilethe whizzing and shrieking are only disagreeable.
Doubtless friendship has its advantages and its pleasures; doubtlesshostility has its isolations and its revenges; still, if called upon tochoose once for all between friends and foes, I think, on the whole, Ishould cast my vote for the foes. Twenty enemies will not do you themischief of one friend. Enemies you always know where to find. They arein fair and square perpetual hostility, and you keep your armor on andyour sentinels posted; but with friends you are inveigled into a falsesecurity, and, before you know it, your honor, your modesty, yourdelicacy are scudding before the gales. Moreover, with your friend youcan never make reprisals. If your enemy attacks you, you can alwaysstrike back and hit hard. You are expected to defend yourself againsthim to the top of your bent. He is your legal opponent in honorablewarfare. You can pour hot-shot into him with murderous vigor; and themore he writhes, the better you feel. In fact, it is rather refreshingto measure swords once in a while with such a one. You like to exertyour power and keep yourself in practice. You do not rejoice so much inovercoming your enemy as in overcoming. If a marble statue could showfight you would just as soon fight it; but as it can not, you takesomething that can, and something, besides, that has had the temerity toattack you, and so has made a lawful target of itself. But against yourfriend your hands are tied. He has injured you. He has disgusted you. Hehas infuriated you. But it was most Christianly done. You can not hurl athunderbolt, or pull a trigger, or lisp a syllable against those amiablemonsters who, with tenderest fingers, are sticking pins all over you. Soyou shut fast the doors of your lips, and inwardly sigh for a good,stout, brawny, malignant foe, who, under any and every circumstance,will design you harm, and on whom you can lavish your lusty blows with ahearty will and a clear conscience.
Your enemy keeps clear of you. He neither grants nor claims favors. Heawards you your rights,--no more, no less,--and demands the same fromyou. Consequently there is no friction. Your friend, on the contrary, iscontinually getting himself tangled up with you "because he is yourfriend." I have heard that Shelley was never better pleased than whenhis associates made free with his coats, boots, and hats for their ownuse, and that he appropriated their property in the same way. Shelleywas a poet, and perhaps idealized his friends. He saw them, probably, ina state of pure intellect. I am not a poet; I look at people in theconcrete. The most obvious thing about my friends is their avoirdupois;and I prefer that they should wear their own cloaks and suffer me towear mine. There is no neck in the world that I want my collar to spanexcept my own. It is very exasperating to me to go to my bookcase andmiss a book of which I am in immediate and pressing need, because anintimate friend has carried it off without asking leave, on the score ofhis intimacy. I have not, and do not wish to have, any alliance thatshall abrogate the eighth commandment. A great mistake is lying roundloose hereabouts,--a mistake fatal to many friendships that did runwell. The common fallacy is that intimacy dispenses with the necessityof politeness. The truth is just the opposite of this. The more pointsof contact there are, the more danger of friction there is, and the morecarefully should people guard against it. If you see a man only once amonth, it is not of so vital importance that you do not trench on hisrights, tastes, or whims. He can bear to be crossed or annoyedoccasionally. If he does not have a very high regard for you, it iscomparatively unimportant, because your paths are generally so diverse.But you and the man with whom you dine every day have it in your powerto make each other exceedingly uncomfortable. A very little droppingwill wear away rock, if it only keep at it. The thing that you would notthink of, if it occurred only twice a year, becomes an intolerableburden when it happens twice a day. This is where husbands and wives runaground. They take too much for granted. If they would but see that theyhave something to gain, something to save, as well as something toenjoy, it would be better for them; but they proceed on the assumptionthat their love is an inexhaustible tank, and not a fountain dependingfor its supply on the stream that trickles into it. So, for every littleannoying habit, or weakness, or fault, they draw on the tank, withoutbeing careful to keep the supply open, till they awake one morning tofind the pump dry, and, instead of love, at best, nothing but a coldhabit of complacence. On the contrary, the more intimate friends become,whether married or unmarried, the more scrupulously should they striveto repress in themselves everything annoying, and to cherish both inthemselves and each other everything pleasing. While each should draw onhis love to neutralize the faults of his friend, it is suicidal to drawon his friend's love to neutralize his own faults. Love should becumulative, since it can not be stationary. If it does not increase, itdecreases. Love, like confidence, is a plant of slow growth, and of mostexotic fragility. It must be constantly and tenderly cherished. Everynoxious and foreign element must be carefully removed from it. Allsunshine, and sweet airs, and morning dews, and evening showers mustbreathe upon it perpetual fragrance, or it dies into a hideous andrepulsive deformity, fit only to be cast out and trodden under foot ofmen, while, properly cultivated, it is a Tree of Life.
Your enemy keeps clear of you, not only in business, but in society. Ifcircumstances thrust him into contact with you, he is curt andcentrifugal. But your friend breaks in upon your "saintly solitude" withperfect equanimity. He never for a moment harbors a suspicion that hecan intrude, "because he is your friend." So he drops in on his way tothe office to chat half an hour over the latest news. The half-hourisn't much in itself. If it were after dinner, you wouldn't mind it; butafter breakfast every moment "runs itself in golden sands," and thebreak in your time crashes a worse break in your temper. "Are you busy?"asks the considerate wretch, adding insult to injury. What can
you do?Say yes, and wound his self-love forever? But he has a wife and family.You respect their feelings, smile and smile, and are villain enough tobe civil with your lips, and hide the poison of asps under your tongue,till you have a chance to relieve your o'ercharged heart by shaking yourfist in impotent wrath at his retreating form. You will receive thereward of your hypocrisy, as you richly deserve, for ten to one he willdrop in again when he comes back from his office, and arrest youwandering in Dreamland in the beautiful twilight. Delighted to find thatyou are neither reading nor writing,--the absurd dolt! as if a manweren't at work unless he be wielding a sledge-hammer!--he will preachout, and prose out, and twaddle out another hour of your goldeneventide, "because he is your friend." You don't care whether he isjudge or jury,--whether he talks sense or nonsense; you don't want himto talk at all. You don't want him there anyway. You want to be alone.If you don't, why are you sitting there in the deepening twilight? Ifyou wanted him, couldn't you send for him? Why don't you go out into thedrawing-room, where are music and lights, and gay people? What righthave I to suppose, that, because you are not using your eyes, you arenot using your brain? What right have I to set myself up as a judge ofthe value of your time, and so rob you of perhaps the most delicioushour in all your day, on pretense that it is of no use to you?--take apound of flesh clean out of your heart, and trip on my smiling way as ifI had not earned the gallows?
And what in Heaven's name is the good of all this ceaseless talk? Towhat purpose are you wearied, exhausted, dragged out and out to the veryextreme of tenuity? A sprightly badinage,--a running fire of nonsensefor half an hour,--a tramp over unfamiliar ground with a familiarguide,--a discussion of something with somebody who knows all about it,or who, not knowing, wants to learn from you,--a pleasant interchange ofcommonplaces with a circle of friends around the fire, at such hours asyou give to society: all this is not only tolerable, butagreeable,--often positively delightful; but to have an indifferentperson, on no score but that of friendship, break into your sacredpresence, and suck your blood through indefinite cycles of time, is anabomination. If he clatters on an indifferent subject, you can do wellenough for fifteen minutes, buoyed up by the hope that he will presentlyhave a fit, or be sent for, or come to some kind of an end. But when yougradually open to the conviction that _vis inertiae_ rules the hour, andthe thing which has been is that which shall be, you wax listless; yourchariot-wheels drive heavily; your end of the pole drags in the mud, andyou speedily wallow in unmitigated disgust. If he broaches a subject onwhich you have a real and deep living interest, you shrink fromunbosoming yourself to him. You feel that it would be sacrilege. Hefeels nothing of the sort. He treads over your heart-strings in hiscowhide brogans, and does not see that they are not whip-cords. He pokeshis gold-headed cane in among your treasures, blind to the fact that youare clutching both arms around them, that no gleam of flashing gold mayreveal their whereabouts to him. You draw yourself up in your shell,projecting a monosyllabic claw occasionally as a sign of continuedvitality; but the pachyderm does not withdraw, and you gradually lowerinto an indignation,--smothered, fierce, intense.
Why, _why_, WHY will people inundate their unfortunate victims with such"weak, washy, everlasting floods?" Why will they haul everything outinto the open day? Why will they make the Holy of Holies common andunclean? Why will they be so ineffably stupid as not to see that thereis that which speech profanes? Why will they lower their drag-nets intothe unfathomable waters, in the vain attempt to bring up your pearls andgems, whose luster would pale to ashes in the garish light, whose onlysparkle is in the deep sea-soundings? _Procul, O procul este, profani!_
O, the matchless power of silence! There are words that concentrate inthemselves the glory of a lifetime; but there is a silence that is moreprecious than they. Speech ripples over the surface of life, but silencesinks into its depths. Airy pleasantnesses bubble up in airy, pleasantwords. Weak sorrows quaver out their shallow being, and are not. Whenthe heart is cleft to its core, there is no speech nor language.
Do not now, Messrs. Bores, think to retrieve your character by cominginto my house and sitting mute for two hours. Heaven forbid that yourblood should be found on my skirts! but I believe I shall kill you, ifyou do. The only reason why I have not laid violent hands on youheretofore is that your vapid talk has operated as a wire to conduct myelectricity to the receptive and kindly earth; but if you intrude uponmy magnetisms without any such life-preserver, your future in this worldis not worth a crossed sixpence. Your silence would break the reed thatyour talk but bruised. The only people with whom it is a joy to sitsilent are the people with whom it is a joy to talk. Clear out!
Friendship plays the mischief in the false ideas of constancy which aregenerated and cherished in its name, if not by its agency. Your enemiesare intense, but temporary. Time wears off the edge of hostility. It isthe alembic in which offenses are dissolved into thin air, and a calmindifference reigns in their stead. But your friends are expected to bea permanent arrangement. They are not only a sore evil, but of longcontinuance. Adhesiveness seems to be the head and front, the bones andthe blood, of their creed. It is not the direction of the quality, butthe quality itself, which they swear by. Only stick, it is no matterwhat you stick to. Fall out with a man, and you can kiss and be friendsas soon as you like; the recording angel will set it down on the creditside of his books. Fall in, and you are expected to stay in, _adinfinitum, ad nauseam_. No matter what combination of laws got youthere, there you are, and there you must stay, for better, for worse,till merciful death you do part,--or you are--"fickle." You find a manentertaining for an hour, a week, a concert, a journey, and presto! youare saddled with him forever. What preposterous absurdity! Do but lookat it calmly. You are thrown into contact with a person, and, as in dutybound, you proceed to fathom him: for every man is a possiblerevelation. In the deeps of his soul there may lie unknown worlds foryou. Consequently you proceed at once to experiment on him. It takes alittle while to get your tackle in order. Then the line begins to runoff rapidly, and your eager soul cries out, "Ah! what depth! Whatperpetual calmness must be down below! What rest is here for all mytumult! What a grand, vast nature is this!" Surely, surely, you are onthe high seas. Surely, you will not float serenely down the eternities!But by and by there is a kink. You find that, though the line runs offso fast, it does not go down,--it only floats out. A current has caughtit and bears it on horizontally. It does not sink plumb. You have beendeceived. Your grand Pacific Ocean is nothing but a shallow littlebrook, that you can ford all the year round, if it does not utterly dryup in the summer heats, when you want it most; or, at best, it is afussy little tormenting river, that won't and can't sail a sloop. Whatare you going to do about it? You are going to wind up your lead andline, shoulder your birch canoe, as the old sea-kings used, and thridthe deep forests, and scale the purple hills, till you come to wateragain, when you will unroll your lead and line for another essay. Isthat fickleness? What else can you do? Must you launch your bark on theunquiet stream, against whose pebbly bottom the keel continually gratesand rasps your nerves--simply that your reputation suffer no detriment?Fickleness? There is no fickleness about it. You were trying anexperiment which you had every right to try. As soon as you weresatisfied, you stopped. If you had stopped sooner, you would have beenunsatisfied. If you had stopped later, you would have been dissatisfied.It is a criminal contempt of the magnificent possibilities of life notto lay hold of "God's occasions floating by." It is an equally criminalperversion of them to cling tenaciously to what was only the_simulacrum_ of an occasion. A man will toil many days and nights amongthe mountains to find an ingot of gold, which, found, he bears home withinfinite pains and just rejoicing; but he would be a fool who shouldlade his mules with iron-pyrites to justify his labors, however severe.
Fickleness! what is it, that we make such an ado about it? And what isconstancy, that it commands such usurious interest? The one is a foibleonly in its relations. The other is only thus a virtue. "Fickle as thewinds" is our deat
h-seal upon a man; but should we like our windsunfickle? Would a perpetual northeaster lay us open to perpetualgratitude? or is a soft south gale to be orisoned and vesperedforevermore?
I am tired of this eternal prating of devotion and constancy. It issenseless in itself and harmful in its tendencies. The dictate of reasonis to treat men and women as we do oranges. Suck all the juice out andthen let them go. Where is the good of keeping the peel and pulp-cellstill they get old, dry, and mouldy? Let them go, and they will help feedthe earth-worms and bugs and beetles who can hardly find existence acontinued banquet, and fertilize the earth, which will have you givebefore you receive. Thus they will ultimately spring up in new andbeautiful shapes. Clung to with constancy, they stain your knife andnapkin, impart a bad odor to your dining-room, and degenerate intosomething that is neither pleasant to the eye nor good for food. Ibelieve in a rotation of crops, morally and socially, as well asagriculturally. When you have taken the measure of a man, when you havesounded him and know that you can not wade in him more than ankle-deep,when you have got out of him all that he has to yield for your soul'ssustenance and strength, what is the next thing to be done? Obviously,pass him on; and turn you "to fresh woods and pastures new." Do you workhim an injury? By no means. Friends that are simply glued on, and don'tgrow out of, are little worth. He has nothing more for you, nor you forhim; but he may be rich in juices wherewithal to nourish the heart ofanother man, and their two lives, set together, may have an endosmoseand exosmose whose result shall be richness of soil, grandeur of growth,beauty of foliage, and perfectness of fruit, while you and he would onlyhave languished into aridity and a stunted crab-tree.
For my part, I desire to sweep off my old friends with the old year, andbegin the new with a clean record. It is a measure absolutely necessary.The snake does not put on his new skin over the old one. He sloughs offthe first, before he dons the second. He would be a very clumsy serpent,if he did not. One can not have successive layers of friendships anymore than the snake has successive layers of skins. One must adopt somesystem to guard against a congestion of the heart from plethora ofloves. I go in for the much-abused, fair-weather, skin-deep,April-shower friends,--the friends who will drop off, if let alone,--whomust be kept awake to be kept at all,--who will talk and laugh with youas long as it suits your respective humors and you are prosperous andhappy,--the blessed butterfly-race, who flutter about your Junemornings, and when the clouds lower, and the drops patter, and the rainsdescend, and the winds blow, will spread their gay wings and floatgracefully away to sunny, southern lands, where the skies are yet blueand the breezes violet-scented. They are not only agreeable, but deeplywise. So long as a man keeps his streamer flying, his sails set, and hishull above water, it is pleasant to paddle alongside; but when the sailssplit, the yards crack, and the keel goes staggering down, by all meanspaddle off. Why should you be submerged in his whirlpool? Will he drownany more easily because you are drowning with him? Lung is lung. He diesfrom want of air, not from want of sympathy. When a poor fellow sitsdown among the ashes, the best thing his friends can do is to stand afaroff. Job bore the loss of property, children, health, with equanimity.Satan himself found his match there; and for all his buffeting, Jobsinned not, nor charged God foolishly. But Job's three friends mustneeds make an appointment together to come and mourn with him and tocomfort him, and after this Job opened his mouth, and cursed hisday,--and no wonder.
Your friends have an intimate knowledge of you that is astonishing tocontemplate. It is not that they know your affairs, which he who runsmay read, but they know you. From a bit of bone, Cuvier could predicatea whole animal, even to the hide and hair. Such moral naturalists areyour dear five hundred friends. It seems to yourself that you areimmeasurably reticent. You know, of a certainty, that you project onlythe smallest possible fragment of yourself. You yield your universalityto the bond of common brotherhood; but your individualism--what it isthat makes you you--withdraws itself naturally, involuntarily,inevitably into the background,--the dim distance which their eyes cannot penetrate. But, from the fraction which you do project, theyconstruct another you, call it by your name, and pass it around for thereal, the actual you. You bristle with jest and laughter and wild whims,to keep them at a distance; and they fancy this to be your every-dayequipment. They think your life holds constant carnival. It isastonishing what ideas spring up in the heads of sensible people. Thereare those who assume that a person can never have had any grief, unlesssomebody has died, or he has been disappointed in love,--not knowingthat every avenue of joy lies open to the tramp of pain. They see theflashing coronet on the queen's brow, and they infer a diamond woman,not recking of the human heart that throbs wildly out of sight. They seethe foam-crest on the wave, and picture an Atlantic Ocean of froth, andnot the solemn sea that stands below in eternal equipoise. You turn tothem the luminous crescent of your life, and they call it the wholeround globe; and so they love you with a love that is agate, not pearl,because what they love in you is something infinitely below the highest.They love you level: they have never scaled your heights nor fathomedyour depths. And when they talk of you as familiarly as if they hadtaken out your auricles and ventricles, and turned them inside out, andwrung them, and shaken them,--when they prate of your transparency andopenness, the abandonment with which you draw aside the curtain andreveal the inmost thoughts of your heart,--you, who are to yourself amiracle and a mystery, you smile inwardly, and are content. They are onthe wrong scent, and you may pursue your plans in peace. They areindiscriminate and satisfied. They do not know the relation of whatappears to what is. If they chance to skirt along the coasts of yourPurple Island, it will be only chance, and they will not know it. Youmay close your port-holes, lower your drawbridge, and make merry, forthey will never come within gunshot of the "round tower of your heart."
There is no such thing as knowing a man intimately. Every soul is, forthe greater part of its mortal life, isolated from every other. Whetherit dwell in the Garden of Eden or the Desert of Sahara, it dwells alone.Not only do we jostle against the street crowd unknowing and unknown,but we go out and come in, we lie down and rise up, with strangers.Jupiter and Neptune sweep the heavens not more unfamiliar to us than theworlds that circle our own hearthstone. Day after day, and year afteryear a person moves by your side; he sits at the same table; he readsthe same books; he kneels in the same church. You know every hair of hishead, every trick of his lips, every tone of his voice; you can tell himfar off by his gait. Without seeing him, you recognize his step, hisknock, his laugh. "Know him? Yes, I have known him these twenty years."No, you don't know him. You know his gait, and hair, and voice. You knowwhat preacher he hears, what ticket he voted, and what were his lastyear's expenses; but you don't know him. He sits quietly in his chair,but he is in the temple. You speak to him; his soul comes out into thevestibule to answer you, and returns,--and the gates are shut; thereinyou can not enter. You were discussing the state of the country; butwhen you ceased, he opened a postern-gate, went down a bank, andlaunched on a sea over whose waters you have no boat to sail, no star toguide. You have loved and reverenced him. He has been your concrete oftruth and nobleness. Unwittingly you touch a secret spring, and aBlue-Beard chamber stands revealed. You give no sign; you meet and partas usual; but a Dead Sea rolls between you two forevermore.
It must be so. Not even to the nearest and dearest can one unveil thesecret place where his soul abideth, so that there shall be no more anywinding ways or hidden chambers; but to your indifferent neighbor, whatblind alleys, and deep caverns, and inaccessible mountains! To him who"touches the electric chain wherewith you're darkly bound," your soulsends back an answering thrill. One little window is opened, and thereis short parley. Your ships speak each other now and then in welcome,though imperfect communication; but immediately you strike out againinto the great, shoreless sea, over which you must sail forever alone.You may shrink from the far-reaching solitudes of your heart, but noother foot than yours can tread them, save those
; "That, eighteen hundred years ago, were nailed, For our advantage, to the bitter cross."
Be thankful that it is so,--that only His eye sees whose hand formed. Ifwe could look in, we should be appalled at the vision. The worlds thatglide around us are mysteries too high for us. We can not attain tothem. The naked soul is a sight too awful for man to look at and live.There are individuals whose topography we would like to know a littlebetter, and there is danger that we crash against each other whileroaming around in the dark; but for all that, would we not have theconstitution broken up. Somebody says, "In Heaven there will be nosecrets," which, it seems to me, would be intolerable. (If that were arevelation from the King of Heaven, of course I would not speakflippantly of it; but though towards Heaven we look with reverence andhumble hope, I do not know that Tom, Dick and Harry's notions of it haveany special claim to our respect.) Such publicity would destroy allindividuality, and undermine the foundations of society.Clairvoyance--if there be any such thing--always seemed to me a stupidimpertinence. When people pay visits to me, I wish them to come to thefront door, and ring the bell, and send up their names. I don't wishthem to climb in at the window, or creep through the pantry, or, worstof all, float through the key-hole, and catch me in undress. So Ibelieve that in all worlds thoughts will be the subjects ofvolition,--more accurately expressed when expression is desired, butjust as entirely suppressed when we will suppression.
After all, perhaps the chief trouble arises from a prevalent confusionof ideas as to what constitutes a man your friend. Friendship may standfor that peaceful complacence which you feel towards all well-behavedpeople who wear clean collars and use tolerable grammar. This is a verygood meaning, if everybody will subscribe to it. But sundry of thesewell-behaved people will mistake your civility and complacence for arecognition of special affinity, and proceed at once to frame analliance offensive and defensive while the sun and the moon shallendure. O, the barnacles that cling to your keel in such waters! Theinevitable result is, that they win your intense rancor. You would feela genial kindliness toward them, if they would be satisfied with that;but they lay out to be your specialty. They infer your innocent littleinch to be the standard-bearer of twenty ells, and goad you to frenzy. Imean you, you desperate little horror, who nearly dethroned my reasonsix years ago! I always meant to have my revenge, and here I impale youbefore the public. For three months, you fastened yourself upon me, andI could not shake you off. What availed it me, that you were an honestand excellent man? Did I not, twenty times a day, wish you had been avillain, who had insulted me, and I a Kentucky giant, that I might havethe unspeakable satisfaction of knocking you down? But you added to yourcrimes virtue. Villainy had no part or lot in you. You were a member ofa church, in good and regular standing; you had graduated with all thehonors worth mentioning; you had not a sin, a vice, or a fault that Iknew of; and you were so thoroughly good and repulsive that you were agreat grief to me. Do you think, you dear, disinterested wretch, that Ihave forgotten how you were continually putting yourself to horribleinconveniences on my account? Do you think I am not now filled withremorse for the aversion that rooted itself ineradicably in my soul, andwhich now gloats over you, as you stand in the pillory where my ownhands have fastened you? But can nature be crushed forever? Did I notruin my nerves, and seriously injure my temper, by the overpoweringpressure I laid upon them to keep them quiet when you were by? Could Inot, by the sense of coming ill through all my quivering frame, presageyour advent as exactly as the barometer heralds the approaching storm?Those three months of agony are little atoned for by this latevengeance; but go in peace!
Mysterious are the ways of friendship. It is not a matter of reason orof choice, but of magnetisms. You can not always give the premises northe argument, but the conclusion is a palpable and stubborn fact. Abanaand Pharpar may be broad, and deep, and blue, and grand; but only inJordan shall your soul wash and be clean. A thousand brooks are born ofthe sunshine and the mountains: very, very few are they whose flow canmingle with yours, and not disturb, but only deepen and broaden thecurrent.
Your friend! Who shall describe him, or worthily paint what he is toyou? No merchant, nor lawyer, nor farmer, nor statesman claims yoursuffrage, but a kingly soul. He comes to you from God,--a prophet, aseer, a revealer. He has a clear vision. His love is reverence. He goesinto the _penetralia_ of your life,--not presumptuously, but withuncovered head, unsandaled feet, and pours libations at the innermostshrine. His incense is grateful. For him the sunlight brightens, theskies grow rosy, and all the days are Junes. Wrapped in his love, youfloat in a delicious rest, rocked in the bosom of purple, scented waves.Nameless melodies sing themselves through your heart. A golden glowsuffices your atmosphere. A vague, fine ecstasy thrills to the sourcesof life, and earth lays hold on Heaven. Such friendship is worship. Itelevates the most trifling services into rites. The humblest offices aresanctified. All things are baptized into a new name. Duty is lost injoy. Care veils itself in caresses. Drudgery becomes delight. There isno longer anything menial, small, or servile. All is transformed
"Into something rich and strange."
The homely household-ways lead through beds of spices and orchards ofpomegranates. The daily toil among your parsnips and carrots is pluckingMay violets with the dew upon them to meet the eyes you love upon theirfirst awaking. In the burden and heat of the day you hear the rustlingof summer showers and the whispering of summer winds. Everything islifted up from the plane of labor to the plane of love, and a gloryspans your life. With your friend, speech and silence are one; for acommunion mysterious and intangible reaches across from heart to heart.The many dig and delve in your nature with fruitless toil to find thespring of living water: he only raises his wand, and, obedient to thehidden power, it bends at once to your secret. Your friendship, thoughindependent of language, gives to it life and light. The mystic spiritstirs even in commonplaces, and the merest question is an endearment.You are quiet because your heart is over-full. You talk because it ispleasant, not because you have anything to say. You weary of terms thatare already love-laden, and you go out into the highways and hedges, andgather up the rough, wild, wilful words, heavy with the hatreds of men,and fill them to the brim with honey-dew. All things great and small,grand or humble, you press into your service, force them to do soldier'sduty, and your banner over them is love.
With such a friendship, presence alone is happiness; nor is absencewholly void,--for memories, and hopes, and pleasing fancies, sparklethrough the hours, and you know the sunshine will come back.
For such friendship one is grateful. No matter that it comes unsought,and comes not for the seeking. You do not discuss the reasonableness ofyour gratitude. You only know that your whole being bows with humilityand utter thankfulness to him who thus crowns you monarch of allrealms.
And the kingdom is everlasting. A weak love dies weakly with theoccasion that gave it birth; but such friendship is born of thegods, and immortal. Clouds and darkness may sweep around it, butwithin the cloud the glory lives undimmed. Death has no power over it.Time can not diminish, nor even dishonor annul it. Its direction mayhave been earthly, but itself is divine. You go back into your solitudes:all is silent as aforetime, but you can not forget that a Voice onceresounded there. A Presence filled the valleys and gilded themountain-tops,--breathed upon the plains, and they sprang up in liliesand roses,--flashed upon the waters, and they flowed to spheralmelody,--swept through the forests, and they, too, trembled into song.And though now the warmth has faded out, though the ruddy tints andamber clearness have paled to ashen hues, though the murmuring melodiesare dead, and forest, vale, and hill look hard and angular in the sharpair, you know that it is not death. The fire is unquenched beneath. Yougo your way not disconsolate. There needs but the Victorious Voice. Atthe touch of the prince's lips, life shall rise again and be perfectedforevermore.
The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) Page 8