select, but because it seems one of the passages which is most readily
extractable:--

'_Ellesmere._ I suppose all of us have, at one time or other, had a
huge longing after friendship. If one could get it, it would be much
safer than that other thing.

'_Milverton._ Well, I wonder whether love--for I imagine you mean
love--was ever so described before, "that other thing!"

'_Elles._ When the world was younger, perhaps there was more of this
friendship. David and Jonathan!--How does their friendship begin? I
know it is very beautiful; but I have forgotten the words. Dunsford
will tell us.

'_Dunsford._ "And Saul said to him, Whose son art thou, thou young
man? And David answered, I am the son of thy servant Jesse the
Bethlehemite. And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking
unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David,
and Jonathan loved him as his own soul."

'_Elles._ Now that men are more complex, they would require so much.
For instance, if I were to have a friend, he must be an
uncommunicative man: that limits me to about thirteen or fourteen
people in the world. It is only with a man of perfect reticence that
you can speak completely without reserve. We talk together far more
openly than most people; but there is a skilful fencing even in our
talk. We are not inclined to say the whole of what we think.

'_Mil._. What I should need in a friend would be a certain breadth of