Revolution changed to George Washington, there will still be the same
old features.... The opposite of this is what every generous nature has
tried. To revive a dying friendship, this is impossible. If you find
yourself losing your friendship for a person, there must be some reason
for it. If the former dear name is becoming indistinct on the tablet of
your heart, the attempt to re-write it will entirely obliterate it. It
is said that a sure way to obliterate any writing, is to attempt to
re-write it.... But it is not true that 'hot love soon cools.' With all
my faults--and to say that I am an O'Molly is to admit that I have
faults, and I am not sure that I would wish to be without them. To speak
paradoxically, a fault in some cases does better than a virtue--as on
some organs 'the wrong note in certain passages has a better effect than
the right.' But, as I was saying, with all my faults, I have never yet
changed toward a friend; I will not admit even to the ante-chamber of my
heart a single thought untrue to my friend. Though it is true my friends
are so few that I could more than count them on my fingers, had I but
one hand.... And these few friends--what shall I say of them? They have
become so a part of my constant thoughts and feelings, so a part of
myself, that I can not project them--if I may so speak--from my own
interior self, so as to portray them. Have you not such friends? Are
there none whom to love has become so a _habit_ of your life that you
are almost unconscious of it--that you hardly think of it, any more than
you think--_'I breathe'_?

There is probably no one who has not some time in his or her life felt
the dreariness of fancied friendliness. I can recall in my own
experience at least one time when this dreary feeling came over me. It
was during a twilight walk home from a visit. I can convey to you no
idea of the utter loneliness of the unloved feeling; it seemed that not
even the love of God was mine, or if it was, there was not individuality